Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
5
The Social and Ecological Benefits
of Organic Farming
It was going to be a hot day. It was only 8:00 a.m., yet the tempera-
ture was already around eighty degrees Fahrenheit. I was en route again
to Palakkad District, Kerala's rice bowl, to spend more time with Thanal.
This time I was heading straight for the Palghat Gap, a valley in the West-
ern Ghats mountain range. Buses filled with pilgrims bustled by the car,
taking advantage of the national highway built between the mountain
pass and the rural countryside, to go to worship in the Sabarimala temple
in the south and also intent on beating the heat of the day. It was only
November, a few months before India's hot summer season begins.
Farmers in the region have blamed Palakkad's heat on the Palghat
Gap, saying it allows hoter and drier air from the neighboring state of
Tamil Nadu to blow into Kerala. The well-
documented
Palakkadan katu
(Palakkad wind) has indeed been a major influence on the climate of
the region. Farmers historically coped with the high temperatures by
building rainwater harvesting wells, such as
kokkarni
(ponds) and
kulam
(tanks), and using this water to irrigate their paddy fields. These water
collection methods have become rarer since the Green Revolution, when
many were replaced by contemporary and more centralized irrigation
techniques, including large-scale dams.
W hile the intense heat of Palakkad made me uncomfortable, the flat-
ness of much of the district made it a suitable location for rice paddy
cultivation, and also for the Biodiversity Board's hundred-acre organic
