Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
cisely, the foundational history behind the later—is rooted in my eforts
to explain why it became one of the first and is still one of the few states in
India to cope with its agrarian crisis by turning to organic farming at the
state level. This state-
specific focus follows the lead of other researchers
specializing in the food system who have shown that there are local and
regional variations to global agricultural changes.9 Globalization
— in the
form of free trade agreements like the WTO's AoA, for example—is not
effacing social and ecological dynamics at the local level. Instead, local
communities and state governments are reacting in various ways to global
pressures to create countermovements. As I mentioned at the end of the
previous chapter, the political economist Karl Polanyi theorized that soci-
eties respond to the marketization and destruction of their environments
and communities through countermovements.10 In the case of Kerala,
the state has responded to the Government of India's implementation of
free trade agreements and economic liberalization policies, which have
so distressed the country's farmers, by pursuing strategies such as state-
sponsored organic farming.
The specific shape of Kerala's organic farming countermovement is the
result of the state's history of redistributive reforms, a socially mobilized
populace, substantial spending on human and social development, and
prior environmental movements. These have been previously fundamen-
tal in the development of Kerala's high HDI and its reputation as a model
as well. Much of this agenda was first initiated by Kerala's Communist
parties just after independence and then sustained by various political
coalitions over the past fifty years. The subsequent intersection of this
political tradition with a growing local environmental movement has cre-
ated a society ready and willing to experiment with alternative social de-
velopment and reforms—now an environmental transformation as well.
Geographically, Kerala is a small state in southwestern India. Close
to the equator, its climate is tropical, and its agriculture relies on the two
annual Indian monsoons. These geographic conditions have made it an
ideal place for the cultivation of several warm-weather crops year round,
including spices such as black pepper. Farmers in South India have traded
many of these spices for centuries with various countries and explorers,
