Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
farming policy passionately and were intent on obstructing its approval
for as long as possible.
Part of the tension between the two institutions stemmed from the
Agriculture Department's continuing sentiment that the Biodiversity
Board was overstepping its authority by telling the department how to ad-
vise farmers, plan agriculture, and perform its duties. One high-
ranking
official (who asked me not to use his name) said: “The Agriculture De-
partment [has] the definitive manpower to provide the correct advice to
farmers.
. . . It is actually the department [that] is taking care of the wel-
fare of the farmers of the state. They are the people who are giving tech-
nical support to farmers to raise crops and all this.”
He continued: “I'm an agriculture man who has studied agriculture.
Our intention, our main mandate, is to increase production, food produc-
tion, and [the] agriculture welfare of farmers without harming the envi-
ronment. . . . In [the] Agriculture Department, Agriculture University . . .
you can get people who have studied agriculture, scientific agriculture.
And the biodiversity man—the chairman—is not an agriculture man.
He is a bird watcher.”
Many employees of the Agriculture Department and other agricultural
institutions shared this official's opinion—that the Biodiversity Board
was imposing its unfounded and unreasonable ideals upon a department
with a longer history and deeper knowledge of agriculture in the state.
W hen I asked K. Jayakumar, the Agricultural Production Commis-
sioner and the second highest official in Kerala's agricultural bureaucracy,
why the Agriculture Department demonstrated such opposition to the
organic farming policy, he answered: “[The] policy is a bundle of pious
wishes . . . it is aspirational in nature . . . but when it comes to practical re-
ality, how do we encourage farmers to opt for organic farming?” He went
on to explain that the market push around nonorganic inputs posed a
strong competition to organic farming methods.
“Do you mean the price is cheap for those inputs?” I asked, to clarify.
“They are highly subsidized,” Jayakumar said mater-of-factly. “Fertil-
izers are extremely subsidized by the Government of India. Then all your
agricultural practices, encouraged by the universities, are all centered
