Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Biodiversity Boar d
• V. S. Vijayan, chair (2007-2010)
• R. V. Varma, chair (2010-2011)
• M. K. Prasad (also a member of the KSSP)
• Program: People's Biodiversity Registers
NGOs
• Thanal (S. Ushakumari and R. Sridhar)
• Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad (KSSP) (M. K. Prasad)
Farmers
• K. V. Dayal
In this chapter, I tell the story of how the Government of Kerala came
to adopt an organic farming policy at the state level. This policy and the
state's organic farming movement are part of an alternative form of de-
velopment
—development that involves the input of civil society and pro-
motes local-level planning on agriculture and the environment. Kerala's
organic farming movement owes its shape and its success in part to the
state's history of botom-
up politics and social movements and reforms.
In the case of the 2010 policy, Kerala's Biodiversity Board leveraged this
political history and mobilized civil society to forge a coalition of NGOs,
agricultural bureaucrats, and farmers to delve into the state's agrarian
morass of death—poisonings, diseases, and suicides. Utilizing the cause
of biodiversity, the Board responded to Kerala's agricultural distress and
pushed back against what had become the norm: the Green Revolution.
The campaign started in 2007, when the Kerala State Biodiversity
Board began to intercede on behalf of agrarian issues.
Dr. V. S. Vijayan, a retired ornithologist, had recently been appointed
by the reigning LDF government to chair this board. Disturbed by the
links between pesticide use and toxins found in human bodies and the
environment, he led the board into establishing Kerala's organic farm-
ing policy, a process that took four years of statewide consultations with
farmers, activists, and government officials. The board and its allies
