Smart farmers the world over have steadily been losing interest in growing crops with chemicals and poisonous pesticides. Consumers are also contributing to the change by demanding food that is organically grown (without toxic pesticide residues).
Everywhere in the country, the interest in organic agriculture has risen so rapidly that agriculture departments are finding it hard to keep up with the demand for information on techniques.
So in what way can the next Minister for Agriculture in Goa get his/her department to join the organic revolution? Sikkim, Bhutan and Kerala — all similar to Goa in terms of their natural assets — have all switched to organic. Sikkim is the world’s
first organic state. Kerala’s Agriculture Minister speaks more passionately than environmentalists on the need to get everyone in Kerala to go organic.
Goans did not first begin to use chemicals to grow food (specially paddy and coconuts) after the setting up of Zuari Agro in 1974. Already due to the Portuguese, they had access to synthetic fertilisers much before the rest of the country got them in 1966. Zuari Agro only got more farmers to switch to chemicals because governments were ready to subsidise them and make them cheap. (That period of subsidy is now almost gone.)
The use of chemicals altered crop structure and brought in damage from insects. To eliminate these, companies rushed in to supply synthetic poisons. The poisons, as we all know, got into the food, causing cancers.
So how does Goa hop onto the organic bandwagon? There are two ways: one, assisting farmers with funding to start doing agriculture organically; two, protecting what is already organic and ensuring it is marketed separately so that it does not get contaminated and is able to get its true value in the market, where organic products command a better price.
What does Goa’s agriculture department offer to farmers to shift from chemicals to organic today? Quite a bit, actually. Ulhas Pai Kakode, who took over as Director, has been promoting a battery of new schemes to enable farmers to switch to using organic inputs. Under the scheme, 50 per cent assistance is given on cost of organic inputs, limited to Rs.10,000 per
hectare and a maximum up to two hectares or Rs.20,000 per beneficiary for all categories of farmers. Farmers with a Krishi card and cultivating a minimum area of 0.1 hectare in the state are eligible.
Farmers can use the money to purchase organic fertilizers such as vermicompost, mushroom waste, neem cake or bio-fertilizers such as rhizobium, azotobacter, azospirillium, etc. Yogita Mehra and her husband, Karan Manral, both quit their jobs as professionals, to start organic farming, and have applied for Krishi cards.
Both do not come from farming families, but were able to learn farming successfully very quickly because they devoted full-time to it. They farm at Succoor. Similarly with Peter Fernandes and Rosie Harding of Assagao. They learnt farming 3 years ago. Today, their organic farming work is known all over the country. On their latest plot at Anjuna, this wondrous young couple have raised 74 species of plants, of which 64 are edible. Where is the problem of food security? they ask. Other youngsters now into farming include Galston D’Souza from Thivim. But there are many more.
What’s the second route to register better organic production in Goa?
There is already a huge amount of crop production in Goa that remains untouched by chemicals. If this is identified, harvested separately, marketed separately as organic, Goa’s production of organic food would skyrocket.
Let me explain what I mean:
There were 64 varieties of rice grown in Goa. Most became extinct after the so-called “green revolution” began to push and promote only a handful of varieties. But the varieties used in the khazans (korgut, khochro and assgo) are still available since they are salt tolerant and could not be replaced by government varieties. The khazan varieties are actually naturally organic varieties since it is not advised to use chemicals to grow them. Why? Because chemical fertilisers are basically salts. No point in adding more salt in a salt prone environment. If farmers growing these varieties are trained to conserve and grow them without mixing them with varieties from 3 non-khazan areas where chemicals are used, they would benefit from better prices.
Don’t forget that khazans are also being nominated to the status of biodiversity heritage areas. The rice varieties would benefit from that heritage tag as well. Both tourist restaurants and their clients would love to eat rice with such heritage tags.
But there are other crops that are also mostly naturally grown and for which chemicals are not used. These include the jackfruit, cashew and mango, in addition to several others like pineapple and love apples. Nobody I know uses chemicals for
their jackfruit trees. Most do not use chemicals for their mango trees. I have for example 8 vintage mango varieties from earlier generations. We never use either chemicals or pesticides on them. They produce fruit once in two years, but all of it is completely organic.
We are yet to show farmers how to maintain organic purity when making feni from either coconut or cashew. This is not something that is difficult to achieve.
Consumers feel better when they know they are buying products that have not been contaminated with chemicals. The agriculture department should take this up as an achievable mission. Since Goans do not use pesticides as a rule, the department can introduce them to bio-pesticides or to NPM (non-pesticide management) where no pesticides are used at all. Chemical poisons should be banned from the State.
Similarly, with coconut and bananas. Most coconuts now harvested in Goa are produced without chemicals. I am not saying some farmers do not use chemicals for coconuts and bananas. However, most can be encouraged to switch to organic inputs. Even in the vegetable arena, Goan farmers raise temporary kitchen gardens in paddy fields where they grow tambdi bhaji, tendlis, valchi baji, orsande (this is also grown in fields after the rice crop and completely without chemicals, since they fix nitrogen directly from the air). If the above production is registered, then allowed to be marketed under the Participatory Guarantee Scheme (PGS), Goa would lead many states in organic production. This is a practical and feasible prospect.
Organic farms all over the country produce as well – if not better – than chemical farms and the prize winners for most crops now days are invariably organic farmers. It is recognized that good organic agriculture is the only form of agriculture for the
future and that present day conventional agriculture (based on heavy doses of chemicals) should be seen more or less as an agriculture in transition. The biggest challenge is emerging in the form of a consumer market that is demanding quality items and has the necessary disposal incomes. Those who are looking for new technologies like latest mobile phones and laptops and sophisticated textiles and cosmetics are also going to demand organic foods in their kitchens.
Similarly, if one looks at Goa as a tourism destination, the present decline in numbers can only be reversed if tourists are also able to relish authentic Goan food grown without pesticides and chemicals. The demand from the tourist hotels for organic products is a growing demand. Unfortunately, all sorts of fake organic products are now trying to fill that gap because Goan organic is not available.
To support organic farming, the Goa administration can insist that all government functions will only serve organic (safe) food. Certainly the government secretariat at Porvorim should serve only organically grown food. Eventually the move should
include all canteens and all public events including the International Film Festival of India. The mid-day meal system in schools should use only organic supplies.
The remarkable truth is that if Goa goes completely organic, all will benefit and no one will lose except Goa’ lone chemical fertiliser plant which is itself now so old it would be best to shut down completely. Certainly no organic farmer till date has
committed suicide. When is it we last ate food without being afraid of the chemicals that have got into it? At least the coming generation should be completely rid of those fears at least. The technology to achieve that is readily available and also widely dispersed. What is required is a determined and organised push. It is therefore necessary that the government provides a clear
direction on this and move the State to organic agriculture through a series of initiatives. The new Minister for Agriculture can provide that and make an enormous difference.
