Here is a compilation of case studies on organic agriculture in the different regions of India.
1. Case Study on Organic Agriculture in North India:
Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, and Uttaranchal Integrated Watershed Development Project:
The Shiwalik Hills stretch into five states- Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, and Uttaranchal. These foothills of the Himalayan range have been identified as one of the degraded agro-ecosystems of India facing acute shortages of drinking water and deforestation to meet fodder and fuel requirements.
Poverty in the region is further compounded by poor infrastructure that keeps areas isolated. An Integrated Watershed Development Project (IWDP) was launched by the government with World Bank support to improve the production potential of the area by evolving the watershed management technologies and encouraging community participation.
The project includes an ecologically-friendly or organic farming component designed to play a vital role in several ways – to restore the fragile agro-ecosystem in the watershed development area; to minimise the impact of agricultural activities on the environment; and to increase farmers’ income. The states of Uttaranchal, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab have made a start in organic agriculture and their projects are reviewed.
The entire project covers 835 villages with an area of 103652 ha. Farmers throughout are small and typically marginal with land holdings 0.2 to 1 ha. Many plots are in higher elevations and on steep slopes throughout the watershed area. Most of the farmers use traditional methods with the more recent advent of conventional components such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides, with the latter having become particularly common.
With little information or visible proof, many farmers are not convinced about the potential of organic methods. Adoption has therefore been fragmented, slow, and partial. Most fear a reduction in yields and difficulties with pest management. Since the entire structure and network of public information has long been geared toward efforts to adopt agro-chemical technologies, most extension agents are unprepared and often not wholly convinced.
Consequently, extension services advocate Integrated Pest Management (IPM) wherein insecticides are suggested as a last resort. Where organic farming is adopted, it is primarily appreciated for the substitution of costly chemical fertilizers.
The project has developed implementation units to help create awareness of organic methods through trainings, demonstrations visits, and interactive workshops. The concept of a bio-villages — where farmers are concerned with natural resource conservation and have adopted the organic farming—has been introduced and a number of these have been constituted although ecological and organic practices are only beginning.
There are few effective farmers’ organisations to help further this work and local governments have in some cases recruited NGOs to help them. For the extension agents, these concepts are novel and many lack of the training and knowledge of organic standards and certification.
A variety of crops such as ginger, peas, capsicum, wheat, paddy and seasonal vegetables are cultivated in the region. Since the land holdings are small, many farmers have very little marketable surplus. Most of the production, remains in the region, being sold in the local market and going to the towns and urban centres. In few villages, farmers pool their produce and hire a truck and sell the produce about 100 kilometres away from the village to get a better price.
Uttaranchal (Millet, Rice, and Beans):
Uttaranchal is a border state in India’s mountainous northwest region where agriculture is the primary form of both subsistence and income. Part of the organic focus is on ten mountainous districts and three in the plains areas. The farmers in the hill regions are often poor and marginal.
The land holdings under organic farming in various organic projects range between 0.1 ha to 5 ha. In many cases organics has first been targeted for adoption among the poorest and thus organic farmers tend to have land area that is three to five times smaller than their conventional neighbours. In the mountainous areas women play a very important role in agriculture. To a large extent men plough the land, while women carry out most other operations like planting, weeding, fertilisation, and harvesting.
In the State of Uttaranchal, organic agriculture is being given an impetus by the state government that has officially declared Uttaranchal as an ‘organic state’. The Government of Uttaranchal is implementing policies that would encourage and incorporate organic methods in all government supported endeavors.
This includes research, training of extension services, incentives, and marketing and promotion. There are at least five major projects currently underway that incorporate various organic components such as composting and biodynamic. Government commitment has extended to rural youth training programmes and the concept of bio-villages has been adopted and promulgated in several areas.
To facilitate coordination and promotion of organic agricultural activities in the state, in July 2003 the Uttaranchal Organic Commodity Board (UOCB) was formed. In 2004, 475 villages with 7125 farmers are involved in the organic agriculture projects of the state.
Self-help groups and village level organisations play some role in the development and dissemination of organics, but public agencies, i.e. extension services are still predominant. In several cases, these have integrated with specialised NGOs to help improve the uptake of improved compost and other organic methods.
For farmers involved in the more marketable crops such as basmati rice and kidney beans, a group certification process has been undertaken in order to reduce costs and improve the adherence to organic standards. For the most part, farmer groups are not as prominent in the organic process. The products produced under the various initiatives are mainly commodities. These are led by finger millet, kidney beans, and rice but also include wheat, maize, ginger, soybeans and several pulses.
Marketing efforts have been focused primarily at the domestic level. Through direct contact and participation in trade fairs and exhibitions, modest sales have been generated. In some cases these sales are for the domestic market and in other cases, traders export them. The state has planned to develop 33 marketing centres for organic products and one has already opened for business. Thirteen tons of organic rice has also been directly exported.
2. Case Study on Organic Agriculture in West India:
Maharashtra (Sorghum, Wheat, and Cotton):
Much of Maharashtra’s Aurangabad region is considered to be very poor. Agriculture is the main source of income and the area depends on modest rainfall that is concentrated in the summer months. The area is multicultural with a sizable Muslim minority comprising approximately 35% of the total population.
The average farm holding is small, between 0.4 and 2 ha with the largest farmers reaching 4 ha. Production methods in the region are a mixture of traditional unconventional, but poverty levels have dictated rather modest use of synthetic agro- chemical inputs.
The Institute for Integrated Rural Development (IIRD) is a civic organisation that has targeted women, and particularly destitute women, for training needs and rural development activities. As a result, 60% of its beneficiaries are women. Accordingly, it is also women who facilitate and organise local groups.
These in turn are supported by technical staffs from IIRD who provide the inputs and the training required. The current project began with 400 farmers in 1992. Today, it has grown to over 1700 farmers. IIRD’s innovations and success have led it to develop training programmes for other NGOs and for public officials.
Organic agriculture has taken an increasing role since the mid-1990s. Although IIRD remains a central fulcrum, many of the project activities are increasingly taken up by the layers of organised farmers that have been developed as part of the project’s empowerment and sustainability goals. IIRD continues to provide on-farm support, certification and marketing services. The farmers are not externally certified but they have an internal certification system in place.
Food security was a predominant concern for a number of years and the focus crops included cereals, legumes, oilseeds, and spices. More recently, as food security has improved, marketing has emerged as a prime concern. The main organic products grown are wheat, sorghum, cotton, and pearl millet.
IIRD has established a weekly organic bazaar in the city of Aurangabad to foster more direct linkages between producers and consumers as well as providing a consistent platform for the exchange of products and services related to organic farming. The bazaar now sells approximately 40% of farmers’ marketable surplus. The rest is sold to local traders and markets.
3. Case Study on Organic Agriculture in South India:
Kerala (Spices and Banana):
The Idukki District is part of Kerala’s Western Ghats region, recognised as one of the world’s 25 bio-diversity hot spots. This hilly region receives adequate rainfall and has maintained a considerable amount of forest cover despite increasing threats from agriculture and timber interests. Three systems of production have dominated the project area. On steep slopes small farmers cultivate multiple crops.
In some valley areas, companies own vast tea plantations. Around such plantations, marginal ethnic farmers cultivate tea in isolated small patches. Except for cardamom, use of pesticide is minimal among small and marginal farmers. The corporate farming enterprises reportedly use considerable quantities of both pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
Currently 1667 certified organic farmers are cultivating one of the areas major products; spices. These cover 1487 ha and none of the farmers own more than one hectare of land. Among them, 1411 farmers are certified through active participation of a local charitable organisation, and 258 farmers are certified through the financial support of the Spices Board, an autonomous agency of the Government of India. The Tea project involves 1200 farmers, cultivating 1110 ha as smallholdings.
Peermade Development Society (PDS) emerged as an NGO in 1980 and as a social service wing of a Christian diocese in response to extensive agrochemical contamination in the area’s drinking water. This resulted in acute toxicity of farmers in the region leading to their hospitalisation. It has focused on tribal and marginalised farmers and contributed to the development of farmer led organisations for the dissemination of organic practices and to effect quality control and standards compliance.
At the field level, farmers are organised into Self-Help Groups (SHGs) with additional layers of organisation that manage local agricultural development. PDS has invested considerable efforts with its participating farmers to develop empowering mechanisms and procedures that prevent domination and subordination patterns that have proved to be detrimental for farmers in the region.
It has developed farmer-led regulatory mechanisms to promote compliance with organic standards that farmers perceive more as a farm management tool to improve their processes and efficiencies.
PDS also links with government and other organisations to promote sustainable farming methods, to conduct joint research with farmers, to control pests and diseases, to facilitate value-added processing and to promote and prove the production of biological inputs for farming. Several of its units such as the Awareness Building Group or Training Centre serve to develop new forms of enterprise and a Land to Lab Centre encourages farmer-oriented innovation and testing of ideas.
PDS has established processing facilities for the farmers to capture more value and its Export Division is one of several functional marketing units that export primarily pepper and bananas. Most of the production is destined for the domestic market and an integral part of PDS’ success has been its entrepreneurial experience. It helped to develop the local medicinal plants industry that integrated with pharmaceutical processing and national as well as overseas marketing.
Spices and tea are the primary crops but several other varieties of nuts and fruits are also produced. In keeping with the project biodiversity commitment, no cereals are cultivated and diverse tree fruits are encouraged. These include jackfruit, banana, plantains, coconut, and guava. Most are for self-consumption as are the few vegetables and greens cultivated by many households.
Karnataka (Vanilla, Pepper, Banana, Rice and Sugar):
The Mandya District, just east of Mysore, falls into the Southern Dry Zone with an annual rainfall of 700 mm. The farmland is very dry. The 1288 beneficiary families in the surrounding village depend mainly on agriculture for their livelihood. All are poor and literacy is lower than the Indian average (males 83% and women 35%). Nearly 90% are small and marginal farmers with an average land holding of less than I ha. The total cultivable area is 2129 ha of which nearly 1655 ha (approximately 80%) are under irrigation.
Until the mid-90s most farmers practiced chemically- oriented farming primarily with mono-crops such as rice, sugarcane, and pulses. Many have abandoned mono- cropping and synthetic agro-chemicals and some have attained organic certification. Crop diversification and related activities have increased the average income of farmers by 25%.
The Eco-Agri Research Foundation (EARF) — as the central organising body — is a registered trust that since 1994 serves as a 50 ha model farm demonstrating organic farming and biodynamic practices. The concept demonstrates a complex system of eco-farming with- animal husbandry; conservation of soil and water through water harvesting structures; vegetative soil erosion checks; and production of high value crops like vanilla, pepper, and banana.
Its purpose is to show the types of ‘Farming Systems’ suitable for the area and promote the concept of a land and cattle-based economy that is in harmony with nature. The main objectives were to create models of sustainability through adoption of organic and bio-dynamic practices and to demonstrate such models to the farmers of surrounding areas. Its local presence has permitted practical field testing of the new approaches and this has reduced farmers’ trepidation to adopt new methods.
The difficulties experienced in the conversion to organic/bio-dynamic farming and in the marketing of the produce by the farmers in the area resulted in a number of useful lessons that resulted in EARF taking on some ‘social entrepreneur’ responsibilities since 1996.
The major organic products generated are jaggery sugar (54 mt), rice (25 mt), vanilla (0.8mt) and banana (10 mt); much of which is sold by the EARF in domestic markets at nearby Bangalore and Mysore and to market agents in other major cities.
The Foundation pays farmers a substantial premium, even during the transition. It is also procuring organically grown vanilla, ginger and pepper from other parts of Karnataka as well as from the neighbouring state of Kerala to combine with its own and improve export efficiencies to the USA and European countries.
4. Case Study on Organic Agriculture in Central India:
Madhya Pradesh (Cotton):
Maikaal bioRe is an initiative situated in a traditional cotton growing area, which mainly extends along the flat topography of the Narmada River in the Khargone District. This many case study results from a more extensive research project monitoring input, output and field data of 100 organic and conventional farms over the complete cropping period 2003/04. The farms were selected on a random basis in ten randomly selected villages of the Maikaal project region. The selected organic farms have been in the project for at least three years.
By the early 1990s companies in cotton business had become acutely aware of declining yields, deterioration of soil fertility and persistent pollution from the increasing necessity to apply pesticides (In India, cotton is grown on 5% of the cultivable land, but receives 54% of the insecticides used in agriculture). The same problems were occurring in many of the other major cotton producing countries as well.
In 1993, the Maikaal organic cotton initiative was started by a major Swiss yarn trading company, together with Maikaal Fibres Ltd., an Indian spinning mill. The experiment developed into a commercial project, which has grown and is now run by an independent company called Maikaal bioRe (India) Ltd, employing 36 persons.
Farmers are both suppliers (raw cotton) to the company and its customers for support services such as training, consulting, crop monitoring, inputs, etc. Two farmers already sit on the Board as Directors and the company’s intention is to involve more as shareholders.
The project focuses on biodynamic, certified organic cotton for the export market. It demonstrates how strong corporate leadership can create mutually profitable initiatives that address the environmental needs of farming communities. The project has a strong market orientation and has helped farmers to efficiently apply state-of the- art organic technology and methods.
Training is an integral part of participation and the company provides all necessary inputs. This results in considerable efficiencies. For example, labour utilisation is less in the organic systems than in the conventional system. Production costs are lower and yields are higher than in similar conventional systems.