Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
government's investment in education; and with the advent of Indocert
and the hiring of Keralite inspectors to explain guidelines and the inspec-
tion process to local farmers, certification did not involve cumbersome
standards that were difficult to decipher.57 And Chackochan, Peringara-
pillil, and George all insisted that compared with farmers' previous en-
counters with certification programs run by foreign entities, Indocert's
certification process was friendly to the culture and language of Kerala.,58
Several other farmers I spoke with informally during regular Organic
Wayanad meetings and training sessions also told me that prior to certifi-
cation they were farming organically
—that is, without pesticides. Certifi-
cation merely rewarded these existing practices.59 Chackochan and other
farmers regularly compared their organic farming practices to what their
fathers and forefathers used to do, with older Indian technologies and
traditions that predated the Green Revolution. At one of the ICS's organic
farming training programs, leaders emphasized this point—that organic
farming was the farming of previous generations—again and again. Fur-
thermore, George, who led the training, pointed out that today's
certified
organic farming scheme was fortunately more flexible and technologi-
cally savvy compared to the agricultural practices of the previous genera-
tions. Unlike earlier farming practices, certified organic farming encom-
passed zero-budget, natural, Vedic, and biodynamic farming, as well as
other technologies and methods, such as no-till agriculture.60 His point
was that farmers could pick from any one of those production methods,
whichever they saw as suitable for their lifestyles, and still be certified
organic for export. They all fostered sustainability and biodiversity by
prescribing practices such as crop rotation, companion planting, and the
utilization of organic inputs.
Chackochan also emphasized that IOFPCL and Organic Wayanad had
now earned the reputation domestically of being a group of veritable or-
ganic farmers in northern Kerala—something that certification guaran-
teed and was a necessity for concerned Indian consumers. At a monthly
meeting of Organic Wayanad's farmers that I observed, Chackochan an-
nounced that several consumer groups and outlets in nearby cities had
heard about their organic farming activities and had approached him and
