Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
been advocating different forms of agriculture, like rice paddy cultivation,
in districts like Wayanad.
Organic agriculture has therefore become the state's latest project for
improving land use in Wayanad. But as the preceding quotation demon-
strates, the board and Thanal have been promoting organic agriculture
in a particular way: away from cash crop agriculture to farming rice (and
vegetables) for local consumption. The Biodiversity Board's efforts led
one state official to announce at the 2010 International Horticultural Ex-
position that Kerala could now not just be called “God's Own Country”
but “Food's Own Country” as well.
“Communists are hypocrites because they first wanted to promote
migration to Wayanad, and now they're against it because of
biodiversity,”
Chackochan told me vehemently one evening, as we conversed about the
organic farming policy and the Biodiversity Board. His own parents
—
from a Syrian Christian background—had migrated to Wayanad decades
earlier, and his family had been farming various cash crops for generations
both in Wayanad and in southern Kerala. He steadfastly defended his po-
sition that third-party certification of organic agriculture for export ben-
efited Kerala's farmers. He also argued that certification was just as good
for biodiversity, because certified organic farmers did not use poisonous
chemicals that killed of beneficial insects and wildlife. Further, many of
these farmers were growing a variety of crops, not just monocultures. Or-
ganic Wayanad's coffee farmers, for example, continue to intercrop cof-
fee and pepper vines, meaning that their coffee is shade grown. Growing
coffee under a canopy of trees fosters the biodiversity of bird species.46
Additionally, coffee farmers tend to cultivate several other crops on their
farms, including bananas, mangos, coconuts, and even rice paddy fields in
the later areas. Chackochan admited to being frustrated with receiving
mixed signals about agriculture and land use from the government.
Other certified organic farmers in Wayanad also directed their dislike
of government at the Communist parties. Over dinner one evening, a
self-identiied Syrian Christian, organic farmer, and member of the Con-
gress party (the more conservative party of Kerala) expressed to me why
