Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
“So both me and Usha went [to the Biodiversity Board office]. And we
sat there, and then we looked to the Biodiversity Strategy Action Plan, we
found that lot of things needed to come in there.”
I nodded my head.
“And Dr. Vijayan was an extremely open person. This was the time
when we were fighting genetically modified crops, we were starting to
fight, you know, issues like that. So, we thought, that should come into the
Biodiversity Action Plan. So we gave a huge number of, you know, inputs
into the plan.”
One of those inputs was the recommendation that the state should cre-
ate an organic farming policy.17 This suggestion piqued Vijayan's interest.
“Vijayan said that we should sit [in] on organic farming policy discus-
sions,” said Sridhar frankly. After the Biodiversity Board finalized the
Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, Vijayan turned his focus, in 2007,
to developing a separate organic policy. As Sridhar recounted, Vijayan
reached out again to Usha and to him for their agricultural expertise.
Together Vijayan and Thanal, along with Dr. J. Nair, a professor of agri-
culture in the state extension service and an informal expert member of
the Biodiversity Board, formulated the first draft of the organic policy.18
This proposed policy envisioned Kerala's conversion to organic farming
happening within five years.
After writing a draft of the organic farming policy, the next step was
to obtain feedback from others. Vijayan and Thanal organized several
workshops throughout the state so that farmers and communities would
have the opportunity to provide input on the priorities and direction
of agriculture in Kerala. At the first workshop, a two-day event at K AU-
Vellayani, a branch of agricultural extension near the state capital, farm-
ers and farmers' groups, university extension scientists, activists, officials
from the Agriculture Department, and ministers from other government
agencies discussed the early version of the policy. The LDF Chief Minis-
ter, V. S. Achuthanandan, presided.
Workshop discussions were intensely heated. Several atendees did
not want to pursue a statewide strategy of organic farming. According to
many I interviewed, the participants separated into three groups: farmers,
