Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
farming pilot project from 2008 to 2011. The CPI's historic strength among
the district's farm laborers also rendered the region a welcoming place for
LDF experimentation in agriculture. And indeed, the roads out to the pilot
farming area were arrayed with multitudes of posters, banners, and signs
for Kerala's Communist parties.1
W hile Kerala's Agriculture Department and extension were laggardly
scrutinizing drafts of the organic farming policy, the Biodiversity Board
proceeded to fund an “agro-
biodiversity enhancement programme” in
the village of Padayeti in central Palakkad District, in the Palghat Gap.
Through subsidies and training sessions, this three-
year pilot project
converted a large area to organic agriculture, a test of what the entirety
of Kerala could become within a few years. To build legitimacy for the
project, the board, in partnership with local universities and researchers,
monitored and evaluated the agricultural biodiversity and soil structure
of the fields. Thanal provided field support and even housed in the village
a staf member, whose purpose was to atend local-level governmental
meetings and organize farmers and their families around sustainable
agriculture.2
The board's experiment at Padayeti signiicantly inluenced the early
years of the organic farming policy. After the policy's finalization, the
Agriculture Department created the Organic Farming Programme to
implement it statewide. In 2011, the state government alloted 10 million
rupees (around $200,000) to the newly minted program. The majority of
the funds were dispersed to twenty local-level units of government, called
“block panchayats,”
for training and inputs such as organic fertilizer.3 Bu-
reaucrats and Thanal staff held up the board's pilot project as an example
of how the conversion to organic agriculture could occur and be scaled up
in these twenty pioneer block panchayats. Immediately after the Organic
Farming Programme was created, agriculture
officers from the block
panchayats visited Padayeti's pilot farming area during state-sponsored
training sessions.4 One such officer, who visited from the northern Kerala
district of Wayanad, felt so inspired by the trip that he became convinced
that organic agriculture was one of the best methods for agriculture for
his block panchayat.
