Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
To elaborate, the organic farming policy promotes organic agriculture,
but it also supports both further decentralization of agricultural decision-
making and changing relationships within Kerala's agricultural sector,
giving farmers more autonomy from the state government and the free
market with their purchasing decisions, the making of fertilizers, and
marketing. As such, the policy advocates that farmers exchange and save
traditional varieties of seeds instead of HYV seeds, create organic inputs
together as opposed to purchasing them from markets, and collectively
find opportunities for selling organic goods. Its recommendations align
with principles of Kerala's political reforms, by prioritizing the “seed sov-
ereignty of the farmers and the State” and creating “a state-
wide intensive
campaign on organic farming in the form of a popular movement.”26
The policy also advocates production for domestic consumption and
supports the creation of domestic marketing channels, to break ties that
farmers have to international commodity markets, a strategy not all
farmers agree with, as I show in chapter 6. However, the policy does not
require that producers farm for specific purposes, and it also remains un-
specific about how to practice organic agriculture, giving local govern-
ments flexibility in making decisions. Hence, the policy is not imposing
established and international organic standards on farmers but is offering
opportunities for farming communities to create and agree upon their
own organic farming norms. Additionally, Usha explained to me that one
objective of the policy is to reform the Agriculture Department's Cen-
tralized Purchasing Policy, which requires farmers to buy inputs from ac-
credited state agencies in order to qualify for government subsidies. The
organic farming policy instead promotes and subsidizes the communal
creation and organization of inputs at the panchayat
level, such as shared
vermicompost tanks, panchagavayya, and local manure production and
distribution.27 As a result, as framers of the policy hope, farmers will no
longer have to rely on buying external inputs, and possibly go into debt to
make such purchases, to grow food.
Organizers behind the policy see such reforms as the epitome of
swaraj
,
Gandhian and local self-rule. Indeed, the revolutionary potential of the
policy rests in the fact that it promotes self-suiciency in food production
and local-level decision making—severing farmers' dependence on exter-
