Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
around this kind of interventions, where you have to use . . . fertilizers,
pesticides, insecticides, everything. And the market, which pushes these
things
— products — is also extremely strong.
“And farmers are also used to it,” Jayakumar added. “They know the
results. They know, and also they are aware of the immediate benefits
. . . they know the immediate benefits, and they know the ill effects of not
using these things. . . . Therefore the farmer, and the scientist, and the
administrator are already convinced about the short-term returns of con-
tinuing with the existing practices.”
The Agricultural Production Commissioner stated one more thing:
“Organic comes in as an uninvited guest, if I may say so.”
In reflecting on the relationship between the farmer, the scientist, and
the administrator, Jayakumar's words ignored the grassroots environ-
mental activism behind the policy, as well as the top-down authority that
decentralization was atempting to break. His words also conirmed the
Agriculture Department's displeasure with the Biodiversity Board's med-
dling with the status quo and its disrupting the trend toward more and
more chemical application in agricultural production. Data from 2001 to
2002 show that Kerala was the second highest consumer of fertilizers per
hectare in India. Between 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 the application of
chemical insecticides and fungicides increased in the state as well.23 The
Biodiversity Board's organic farming policy and initiatives threatened to
upset this system. In other words, the Biodiversity Board was proposing
changes not only in the relationship between farmers and agricultural
scientists in Kerala but also between people and the government more
broad ly.
LDF politicians—Agriculture Minister Ratnakaran and the Chief
Minister—were left to mediate between the Biodiversity Board and the
Agriculture Department. According to Nair, the professor at K AU who
had helped draft an early version of the policy, “The agricultural minister,
you know, was caught between his office and the Biodiversity Board and
his commitment to organic farming.”
The high-ranking official in the Agriculture Department who had
asked me not to use his name, and who had previously expressed his
displeasure with the organic farming policy and the Biodiversity Board
