Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Afterwor d
The Ongoing Work
I caught up with Usha over the phone after Kerala's government
released its 2013-2014 budget. Funding for organic agriculture under the
new budget looked promising: the UDF government had increased funds
for the organic farming policy to over 100 million rupees, close to $2 mil-
lion for the year. The government had also earmarked separate funds for
organic farming under other programs, including a cashew improvement
project.1 The channeling of specific funds to organic cashew cultivation
is indicative of how the state's endosulfan tragedy involving cashew plan-
tations in Kasaragod District is still haunting Kerala's political climate.
Usha happily reported that support for organic farming was continuing
to increase in parts of the state. “The pesticide ban and the policy [are]
still in place,” she said incredulously. Kudumbashree, the women's neigh-
borhood groups that had been created under the People's Plan had also
taken up organic farming as an official project. She reported that women
participating in Kudumbashree brought twenty-four thousand hectares
in their communities under organic farming methods in the past few
months. Usha believed they were influenced by the Biodiversity Board's
pilot project in Padayeti, which received considerable media coverage.
Usha had expected the more conservative UDF government to back-
track on the work that Thanal and Varma and Vijayan, the former Chairs
of the Kerala State Biodiversity Board, had done on organic farming in
the state under the LDF, before the later was voted out of power in 2011.
Thus far this has not been the case, and the UDF has even appointed offi-
cials to cabinet-level positions who are proponents of organic agriculture.
W hen I spoke with K. M. George of Organic Wayanad, he had good
news to share as well. Organic Wayanad was continuing to maintain the
