There and Back Again: the World Travels of a Watson Fellow: Solving Farmer Suicides: Zero Budget, Organic, Rural Industrialization

November 22, 2013 - Post Vidarbha Reflections

I always find myself reflecting on trains. Except this time is much different given the odd and unfortunate circumstances. After a fruitful visit to the “farmer suicide belt” of India (Vidarbha region of Eastern Maharashtra), I am now headed to Chennai to hopefully have a brief meeting with Dr. MS Swaminathan, “The Father of the Green Revolution” in India. Yet, a few minor mistakes lost me more than twelve hours as I found myself six hours on a train traveling in the opposite direction of Chennai. Who knew that there were two Tamil Nadu Express trains with the same arrival and departure times from Nagpur Railway Station right next to each other on platforms #1 and #2 with train numbers 12621 and 12622 respectively? You can imagine my shock and confusion when I asked the men in my compartment where they were going and one responded with New Delhi. This was further exacerbated by the fact that one more man came into our compartment saying he had seat number 28. To both of these statements, I responded: “That’s impossible! I’m seat number 28 and I’m going to Chennai” (the opposite direction of New Delhi). They confirmed that I had taken the wrong Tamil Nadu Express train and the next stop was 5-6 hours journey. At that point, I burst out laughing and crying simultaneously. It was like my worst nightmare. Conductors and “TTs” (ticket checkers) do not verify tickets until around 1 hour into the journey, not upon boarding at the platform, so this could not even save me. I was with Mayuri, the twenty year-old girl whose family hosted me in Nagpur during the Zero Budget Farming model farm tours. We both saw the same sign at the railway station that said “Tamil Nadu Express – Platform #1.” I didn’t even give it a second thought since I was with a Hindi-speaking Indian. I am kicking myself as I think of all the instances in which this could have been prevented (e.g. the simple question of verifying – “is this train going to Chennai?” as soon as I boarded, which is what I always do 10x over when I take buses since there is usually no indication in English and instead it’s a guessing game). I suppose I have taken for granted that train travel has been relatively easy up to this point. That being said, what a lesson learned! There is nothing I can do about it now except hope for the best. So I ended up taking the train six hours to Bhopal in Madya Pradesh, after my compartment of nine men debated amongst themselves what I should do. It was kind of a funny sight: people checking ticket availability on their smart phones and reading train schedules in travel books – everyone seemed to have their own idea of what would make the most sense. One man suggested I take this train all the way back to New Delhi and then catch another one to Chennai the next day (This would be about 50 hours extra), someone else questioned why I don’t just pay to fly to Chennai (I explained that I am a student researcher on a tight budget and simply can’t afford it), while the conductor chose not to fine me (probably due to the overwhelming support of my cabin mates) and instead said I should just get off at the next station (Itarsi). After deciding that Itarsi is a small, somewhat sketchy station with few connecting trains, I opted to get off at Bhopal, a fairly major station and try my luck with the Station Manager and the many trains that go daily to Chennai. The infinitely tricky part about trains in India is that tickets sell out very far in advanced – people are booking up to 8 weeks ahead of time! So train travel is great, but only if you can secure a ticket and all the tickets to Chennai from Bhopal were technically sold out. I am beginning to think that this whole side trip to Chennai for one lousy interview is just simply not meant to be. It started when I received an email from Dr. Swaminathan’s secretary who said his schedule has changed and I need to come around 12 hours earlier than my original train. Of course, I misread the train schedule, which said 6:15 arrival, which I took to mean 6:15 PM, when it was really 6:15 AM. So unknowingly, I quickly cancelled this ticket and reserved an emergency tat kal ticket for a day earlier, which lost me money. Then this ticket was useless after boarding the wrong train. Fast-forward six hours: from Bhopal, I purchased a “general ticket” as suggested by the Station Manager and found any seat I could. I slept in 3^rd AC class last night. It was damn lucky that the compartment I randomly saw empty actually had 5 decent men staying in it with exactly one free bed and that none of them tried anything on me during the night, though I was put off when one asked if I was traveling alone in sort of a creepy voice. And knock on wood, my luggage even stayed put, though I slept with my passport and computer under my pillow. After a paranoid and restless night’s sleep, now I am waiting for the ticket checker to come around so I can explain my pathetic and embarrassing situation and hopefully pay to stay in AC class. And I was worried about arriving so late (midnight) in a strange Indian city, but maybe things are turning around, as I received a call last night from Suresh of AID India in Hyderabad who said his friend could pick me up at the train station. I am just crossing my fingers that I make it to Chennai.

Rewind two weeks to my arrival in Vidarbha region of Eastern Maharashtra, known as the "farmer suicide belt of India." Again, it was quite the whirlwind tour of dryland farming in this marginally productive area. I spent the first two days with Subhash Palekar, founder of the Zero Budget Spiritual Farming movement in India. This was informative to me on a number of levels. For instance, the concept of zero budget and how farmers can avoid debt, suicides, and market dependence by preparing 100% of their inputs on farm with local resources. The most important ingredient to ZBSF is jeev amrit, which is a microbial culture, composed of cow dung, urine, jaggery, gram flour, soil, and water. These microbes then activate existing nutrients in the soil, transforming them into a functional state for plants, which eliminates the need for fertilizers. Other distinguishing aspects are intercropping, seed treatment with cow dung and urine, and mulching with the collective objective of promoting soil aeration and health as preventative measures against pest and disease attack, also reducing the need to apply even biopesticides. It is considered zero budget because the costs from cultivation (seeds), water (electricity) and labor (plowing, weeding etc.) can be offset by the sales of intercrops and the main crop is just an income bonus. Palekar calls this a traditional Indian technology and heavily critiques modern forms of sustainable agriculture such as vermicomposting, pit compost, and biodynamic. His beliefs are rooted in religion (he does not believe that goats, sheep, or chickens should be part of the farm system because they are meant for slaughter and consumption and being non-vegetarian goes against God’s wishes) and he literally worships the local, Deshi cow, which along with the soil are “mother India.” I commend Palekar’s efforts to mobilize a mass movement of farmers who are saying no to market dependence and uplifting themselves through proactive measures. However, I am extremely skeptical of his conspiracy theorist tendencies: his beliefs that vermicomposting uses “evil” surface-feeding worms that leave behind toxic heavy metals in the soil (introduced by the West to sap India of its soil), that “organic farming” (in the form of compost and biodynamic) is more dangerous than chemical because it releases volatile carbon into the atmosphere contributing to global warming and makes farmers reliant on purchasing organic inputs from the market, and that humans were created by God only as vegetarians. Among his many publications, he wrote a book titled, “Is Organic Farming a Conspiracy?” This was both frustrating for me to read because of the poor English grammar and spelling, the apparent lack of fact checking, and absurdity of statements. Palekar writes, “The aim [of Zero Budget Spiritual Farming] is to get poisonless food, pollution free water, air environment, and happy, pleasant, wealthy and prosperous life for each and every living being is the birthright of everybody” (177). “To establish that new agricultural system and lifestyle which will be continuously increasing, self-developing, self-nourishing and self sufficient, in which very little energy will be utilized but we will get topmost in quality and quantity of production” (181). Yet he claims that composting, vermicompost, and biodynamic are evil, dangerous, and a western-driven conspiracy against Indian agriculture. He vehemently condemns all other forms of sustainable farming (e.g. biodynamic, permaculture, natural farming etc.) in an angry and defensive manner. As he writes, I think that each of these techniques ultimately wants the same thing, so I also do not think Palekar is doing any favors for the sustainable agriculture movement as a whole by nitpicking jargon. However, he raised a few good points, namely the importance of reducing the cost of production through no external inputs; promoting soil health from the start; and diversified integrated farming systems. Although I am not certain, he may be correct in that Indian farmers were practicing biodynamic farming for thousands of years (with a spiritual, astrological, and seasonal component) and then only recently, the West is trying to repackage and resell this ancient technology to India under the guise of biodynamic. He raises another excellent point, which further motivates me to take up farming as an occupation and lifestyle at some point in my future:

“All these techniques and principles of biodynamic or organic farming are introduced by those intellectuals in society who are not practicing farming, they do not know how to plough or harrow the soil; how to sow the seeds, how to harvest with their own hands. They don’t know the actual problems, which the farmers are facing” (64).

On the model farm visits with Palekar and about 50 others Indian farmers (almost all men), I was able to see impressive yields and incomes, content farmers, and generally successful operations. These farms had minimal weeding (though this was the most labor intensive part of the operation), minimal tillage, lots of mulching and intercropping, integrated systems with livestock, and a direct visual comparison of chemical and zero budget crops (e.g. rice). The difference was astonishing, as well as one custard apple variety developed using traditional breeding methods by the farmer himself, which was larger, sweeter, and a better pulp to seed ratio. These tours made me realize that seeing is believing and for farmers who have not yet phased out chemicals, seeing the potential and success from innovative farmers is an absolute prerequisite to conversion. In fact, I was a bit skeptical myself, especially seeing and tasting the custard apples, which were grown without any external inputs.

These tours also reminded me of the limitations of language. Naturally, the main language was Mahrati and while I tried to tag alongside people who I knew spoke English, maximizing the experience and learning was difficult. Moreover, because India is such a vast and culturally diverse country, it has been near impossible to learn any one language proficiently. For example, spending a month in Ladakh where they speak Ladakhi, two weeks in Punjab with Punjabi, three weeks in Maharashtra with Mahrati, a week in Andra Pradesh with Telegu, and now Tamil Nadu where Tamil is more common than Hindi! Relying on other people to translate is tough because I have to trust that they are honestly conveying information, especially if they have their own predispositions and biases. One girl who translated for me during the tour was a young journalist from the Times of India who was writing a story about the event for the newspaper. One thing she said that will stand out in my memory for a long time: India has three religions (I expected her to say some combination of Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity or Sikhism), instead she said: cricket, Bollywood, and politics. This made me laugh but also resonated with me, as I have been able to see two Bollywood films in theaters while here (though both in Hindi without subtitles), have been following politics a bit in the daily newspapers, and am always hearing the latest about Sachin Tendulkar, India’s famous cricket player who is now retiring. Anyway, here is the link to the article she wrote for the Times of India titled: "Natural farming: Going back to the roots"

A feast for a special festival/holiday where sisters honour their brothers (seems like it's always women honouring men around here. There is another festival where wives fast the whole day for their husbands...)

A delicious Mahrati meal

My new favourite fruit: custard apple

Saris and custard apples

Farmers of various backgrounds (organic, conventional, in transition, etc.) attending the Zero Budget farming model farm tour

More custard apples :)

Nursery

Jeev amrit (cow dung, urine, jaggery/sugar, gram flour, water etc. to activate microbes in the soil to transform nutrients like NPK into usable form by plants)

Filming Subhash Palekar for the local news

Cows in India are very photogenic

The Swastika here is a sign of welcoming

Sunsetting over Vidarbha

Difference between zero budget (left) and chemically farmed (right) rice; notice the difference in the root development, health of straw, amount of grains etc.

Turmeric

Orange orchard

A local publication in Mahrati totally devoted to agricultural issues for farmers' benefit

Traditional alongside modern

Crazy eyes...

Buffalo

Citrus

Stirring the jeev amrit

Banana grove

After these model farm tour visits, I went to the National Children’s Festival for one day in Wardha. I met up with Kawaljeet Dhindsa, the school director from Punjab who so graciously helped me arrange interviews back in October. It was comforting seeing a familiar face and I knew that it would mean a lot to him if I attended at least one day of the festival. He brought almost 20 students with him from Punjab, who joined students from the majority of Indian states to engage in cultural programs, games, singing etc. This little side trip was very indicative of the absurdities of India. For example, sharing a hotel room and double bed with a forty-something-year-old Sikh man, trying on his turban (and helping him wrap his turban in the morning), sharing a glass of bootleg whiskey mixed with Pepsi, and just generally bonding. This has reminded me that more than any “data” I could possibly glean from this fellowship, it is about the people I’ve met. Some individuals that stand out in my memory:

· Helen Nguya, homestay mother in Tanzania

· Tundup, trekking guide and program coordinator of Leh Nutrition Project in Ladakh

· Kawaljeet Dhindsa, Punjabi school director

· Avinash Shirke, PhD student and director of Social Work college in Yavatmal

· Raj, young Indian boy who has become my lifeline in India; Lopa and Nathela – my home away from home in New Delhi

· Prameela, engineer turned farmer and fellow WAF participant

· Kiran Vissa, AID activist; his wife Samyuktha and the AID cohort: Suresh, Yaswanth, and Mohan

· Vibha Gupta, Director of Magan Sangrahalaya

· Anil and Anand, NARI Phaltan directors

With Kawaljeet and his students from SEABA school

SEABA school represent at the International Children's Festival

Each school group did some kind of cultural presentation/song

With Kawaljeet

A Gandhi inspired event

Trying on turbans...ha

After the Children’s Festival, I found myself in Yavatmal, a small town around 120,000 people about 1.5 hours west of Wardha. During this time, I was able to meet with 7 farmers, one farmers’ group, a farmer-inventor, the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation village resource center, and Chetna Organic field office. One of the major lessons learned here was that the unplanned is great. I had been emailing with one man named Ram for more than a year, as he was referred to me by the film company that produced Bitter Seeds, a documentary about the farmer suicides and BT Cotton dilemma in Vidarbha. They said that Ram was certainly the best person to get in touch with in terms of his knowledge and English language skills. They could not have been more wrong. Ram turned out to be a bit of a conspiracy theorizing lunatic (he sent me all these outrageous articles and told me he could only spare a few hours with me after which he would have to start charging $100+/hr for his “consulting services,” which would go towards his seed saving efforts). Upon learning that I was going to meet with Ram, someone from Chetna Organic warned that I wouldn’t want to spend more than a half hour with him because he’s so nutty. He could not have been more correct. Ram was helpful in one regard, however, in that he connected me with Avinash Shirke, a PhD candidate and director of a social work college in Yavatmal. I had no idea who Avinash was before I arrived and only assumed I would be staying at his house. Instead, it proved to be one of the more fruitful encounters I’ve had during the Watson.

Shirke is affiliated with the MS Swaminathan Research Institution as well as principal/director of a social work college in Yavatmal. Most importantly, however, he is currently getting his PhD in rural development and studying the participation of dryland farmers in soil and water conservation in Yavatmal district of Vidarbha region. He’s done 10 case studies, 50 focus groups, and 430 individual farmer interviews. He is a proposing a model of participatory technology development, promoting soil literacy among farmers (without the need for expensive lab testing), and has worked with farmers directly for the last 20 years. He’s also been a practicing farmer himself for the last 2 years. His main research work, however, has been on an alternative scheme for soil and water conservation – instead of government proposed large farm ponds and massive compartment bunding, he is suggesting small farm recharge pits (20 ft in diameter and 9 ft deep that are supposedly permanent structures that will not silt up) per acre and much smaller compartment bunding to address issues of water logging, soil erosion, etc. Another notable aspect of his research is that he designed a questionnaire to help the farmer understand how much soil and water is lost by poor practices. He calls it PRAMAN: participatory and reflective analytical mapping for accountability toward nature (for soil and water conservation), which he modified from The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “PRAM.” Anyways, Shirke took me to visit seven farmers, a farmers’ group, and his own farm as well.

During my 7+ farm visits with Avinash, I saw first-hand how technology definitely does not mean progress. For example, in comparing farmers in Punjab who have the most modern technology (such as tractors and combine harvesters), which unfortunately demands monoculture cropping. Avinash described this as a result of market and profit oriented mindset. I was able to contrast Punjabi farmers with marginal dryland farmers in Vidarbha who, without access to irrigation or high tech machines, are intercropping cotton and pigeon pea for nitrogen fixation. This mixed cropping and lack of mechanization is actually much more “progressive.” I was also disheartened by hearing the actual budget breakdown of dryland farmers who are growing genetically modified BT Cotton: without irrigation, they are getting around 3 quintals per acre and fetching around Rs 4,000/quintal, so about Rs 12,000 income but with agricultural input and familial expenses around Rs 10,000-12,000, the farmer is barely breaking even. It was powerful and depressing being in the birthplace of cotton where farmers don’t understand the BT technology and are killing themselves, coexisting alongside farmers who very much recognize the flaws and are avoiding the system (e.g. Zero budget farming as an alternative through farming self-sufficiency and avoiding market dependence). It was an poignant moment attending a farmer meeting where I asked them if they know about the genetic modification technology behind BT Cotton and when they replied “no,” hearing Avinash explain it to them for the first time. Other notable farm visits during my time in Yavatmal included seeing the comparison of the farm recharge pit and the farm pond and getting to meet the farmers. After learning about the technology from the designer, Avinash, I could hear the benefits from the farmers first hand. I met two farmers whose abutting land tells vastly different stories: one with a successful and overflowing farm recharge pit and another with a dried up farm pond and barren fields. I could tell from their disposition and attitudes what different situations they were in and it broke my heart, especially after learning that the latter paid 10x more money and is now suffering because of poor government planning and implementation. Another farm visit showed me how prosperous one individual can be through patience, hard work, and innovation, and he actually wants his son to become a successful chemical-free farmer, but one who uses the most advanced computer technology. I was able to ask the twelve-year-old son too, who hasn’t ruled out farming all together like most youth his age. Lastly, I was able to meet a farmer who is also an inventor, one who is really innovating and designing. This man has been working for more than 20 years in his community to identify needs and his son shared 25 machines with me that are truly appropriate technologies: need based, affordable, local materials (scrap also), low maintenance, and women-friendly. He calls his research, development, and training portion the “Simple Technique Center” and the manufacturing of machines portion “Chetna Industries” (Chetna means self motivation) through which he doing needs assessment, design, manufacture, sales, and consultation.

Taking notes at the farmers' group meeting

Successful farm recharge pit conceived of by Shirke

With a very successful and innovative farmer (he didn't have any of his own land but through commitment and family support, he built up the capital to purchase it and now he is experimenting with vermicomposting, chemical free farming etc.)

Vermicompost is also subsidized partially by the Indian government

Enjoying the swing

Farming family

Shirke uses these reflective tape strips to keep birds out of his crop because they are easily distracted by shiny objects - pretty creative!

Shirke's farm outside Yavatmal

Practicing with the weeder

Cow crossings often disturb traffic (riding on the back of a motorcycle has become my most common form of transportation in India)

Brinjal (eggplant) one of India's important vegetable crops (recently a moratorium was put on genetically modified BT Brinjal in 2010 per outrage from consumers and citizens)

Women working in the shade house on a large commercial farm

Decorated cows

Receiving flowers is often a gesture upon arrival. Henna and Indian clothes are beautiful

Where the farm manager sleeps at night as to oversee against intruding animals

With Shirke, his wife, and his farming business partner

Family portraits

Farewell gesture

Shirke's wife designed and sculpted the wooden door in the background. She is an incredible artist whose primary medium is using thread to make "paintings" (http://www.threadpaintings.org/)

Post-Yavatmal, I took a bus back to Wardha where I spent the next six days. I met with the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture for an Organic Farming training (mainly for NGO representatives) being put on collaborative with the Regional Center for Organic Farming, which was a good refresher for me. And as I have been inquiring often about the farmer suicide issue in Vidarbha, a salient point from CSA’s director is that, “Where we thought and assumed that technology was not available it was the other way round. The suicides were as a result of technology failure. It’s the integrated pesticide study which is failing and a result of which farmers were caught in the vicious cycle of increasing pesticide quantity.” So basically, dependence on market inputs and “modern” Green Revolution have failed small farmers in India, requiring a shift back towards self-reliance and more traditional agricultural practices (e.g. non-pesticide management). One of the program coordinators took me into the field to visit Dorli Village, which back in 2006 had put their entire village up for sale (you can read an article about it here). As the majority of the farmers were victims of poor production, abysmal income, and lack of government support, the almost 300 residents of Dorli signed onto the sale. After an unsuccessful government intervention, CSA stepped in and with their help, Dorli is shifting towards organic farming and has become the site of a farmer-owned seed producer company. Seeing the seed-processing unit with its massive cleaners, graders, and gravity separators reminded me that technology does have a place in farming: this village-level unit can produce 70 quintals of seed a day, compared to just 2 quintals by hand cleaning (which is what I experienced at Navdanya, a tedious process indeed). Producing certified seeds can also fetch higher prices than selling the crops themselves, so the goal is to increase the number of farmer shareholders and also create more seed producer companies. This business model seems like it increases farmer participation immensely, rendering the whole process more democratic and self-sufficient, rather than forcing farmers to rely on MNCs to provide them with seed. This puts the essential aspect of seed production back into the hands of the producers themselves.

After CSA, I went to the Acharya Shrimanarayn Polytechnic Institute outside Wardha on another unplanned visit, thanks to one of Avinash Shirke’s connections. Here, they are working to building the interface of classroom and village, which provides students with practical training and more meaningful qualitative data and provides villagers with a sort of extension service. One of their main objectives is to reduce the cost of cultivation and increase production with minimal use of chemicals (but not declared organic). Because they are an educational institute, they do not provide free inputs but rather give training, advising, and demonstrations. This goes back to the idea that knowledge transfer is much more beneficial than handouts, especially because a serious issue is that farmers lack access to information and quality extension services.

One of their major programs is Insecticide Resistance Management (IRM) in cotton, which addresses the issue that farmers, without agencies to inform them, are mixing chemicals and heavily over-spraying. They do not know about insect identification, especially of beneficial insects, or problems with resistance, and as a result, pests are developing resistance. To further exacerbate the situation, agri-input shops are often the only source of information and support available to farmers, and naturally, chemical companies are telling farmers that more spraying is better since it is in their interest to maximize profit. Some notable facets of IRM include the on-farm training in farmers’ own fields (not on “model farms”), technical backup support during the whole season, inclusivity and open participation regardless of landholding size, caste, or religion and again, the knowledge-based strategy to educate about beneficial insects. I learned about the importance of identifying and simplifying the Economic Threshold Level with regard to pest management. ETL is the stage at which the pest population will start to cause damage to the crop and theory says that the output should be greater than the input (e.g. yield, expenses) to keep farmers out of the red. Furthermore, the IRM cotton program involves villages selecting a youth liaison/IRM training point person to do weekly scouting and report all sample data back to the institution for future recommendations. This system is beneficial on two levels: it trains youth and pays them for their services, and it can also help fill the extension gap.

I visited the Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Rural Industrialization (MGIRI), a National Institute under the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, government of India. They have six major divisions including: Khadi and textile industries, Bio-processing and herbal based industries, Chemical industries, Rural crafts and engineering, Rural infrastructure and energy, and Management and systems. I toured the facility and met with people in each division. I found myself especially interested in the Khadi section since I have never seen the equipment necessary to turn cotton fiber into garments (including a ginning machine, spinning etc.). I was also impressed by the energy division, which is working to enhance rural machinery and implements to run on the least amount of energy without sacrificing performance. Moreover, the bio-processing section focuses on “developing technology for innovative, value added high quality products related to food, herbal drugs, herbal cosmetics, feed supplements, biofertilizers, biopesticides, plant growth promoters, and panchgavya products.” They aim to do this by disseminating “technologies to strengthen the range of products and enhance quality for domestic and global market competitiveness, work on scientific validation, quality evaluation, and standardization, and product standardization based on traditional knowledge.” Services include testing of products, incubation for enterprise development, skill building and upgradation training, and consultancy.

I completed my visits in Wardha by visiting Dr. Tarak Kate at Dharamitra, an Eco-technology Resource Centre for Sustainable Development. I came to know about Dharamitra from Sara de Fosse, another American agriculture researcher whom I met at Navdanya – the world is perfectly small sometimes! Dr. Kate helped arrange my accommodation at Magan Sangrahalaya and also sent me a number of useful documents on organic farming and challenges to rural development. I would have liked to spend more time at Dharamitra given their focus on eco-technology, but Dr. Kate was busy and I only had a few days in Wardha. This is not to say that my brief visit was not useful. He shed new light on the modern agriculture system by referring to it as “high input, high output, high risk” farming (also money flows out of the village by purchasing external inputs), and instead advocates for a system of no external inputs. His views on the role of appropriate technologies in rural development were logical, succinct, and eloquent. He writes: “As seen earlier, sophisticated high capital intensive technologies were used as a driving force to attain high economic growth in economically fast developing countries; however these technologies have not proved to be of any use in generating employment on mass scale to absorb unskilled majority of people; in fact, they were aimed at getting rid of jobs of such people in the name of achieving financial efficiency. In the context of rural development, instead of technologies which replace the people, we need the ones which engage people. Hence, there is a specific role for application of technologies which can be appropriated to the needs of local communities and fit into social and environmental milieu. These appropriate technologies could be eco-friendly, low capital intensive, easy to be adopted and designed to offer skills to local people for increasing their working efficiency, reducing human drudgery, providing new avenues of income generation and improving the quality of their life. Such technologies are relevant in different sectors of rural life like housing, economic and sustainable water use, organic waste management, domestic fuel, renewable energy needs, sanitation, agriculture, agro-forestry, livestock management, etc. Therefore, a thrust is required for generation and dissemination of such technologies to rural areas as well as creation of a cadre of rural youth who can apply these technologies in the villages and this would account for opening new avenues of income generation as well as entrepreneurship development.” We also discussed a long term study he has been leading in collaboration with Swiss Aid India titled “A Ray of Hope: A Study of Impact of Adoption of Sustainable Agricultural Practices by Resource poor farmers.” This study involved disseminating a package of 17 simple and low cost agricultural practices and technologies based on local, naturally derived materials to 750 small farmers. I feel that this is an extremely comprehensive and useful list of sustainable agriculture practices:

1. Raising of soil bunds
2. Preparation and use of Farm Yard Manure (FYM)
3. Preparation and use of vermi-compost
4. Incorporation of agro-waste in the soil instead of burning it
5. Conducting seed germination test
6. Treatment of seeds with the mixture of cattle dung, cattle urine and ant hill soil
7. Sowing across the slopes
8. Leaving weeds on the farm for in situ composting during rainy season instead of putting it on the bunds
9. Use of different mixed cropping patterns
10. Deep hoeing accounting for rainwater harvesting
11. Use of Sanjeevak - a fermented product of cattle dung, cattle urine and jaggary which acts as growth promoter
12. Use of vermiwash as growth booster
13. Use of cattle urine+ neem leaf extract for pest management
14. Use of trap crops for pest control
15. Use of bird perches for pest control
16. Introduction of perennials in the system in the form of planting of tree saplings
17. Development of farm ponds

In short, through direct comparison of organic and chemical fields, it showed that organic can perform at the same level (or slightly lower) in terms of yield, while providing significantly higher economic returns. The project involved training, engagement of women and youth, farmer study groups, exposure visits to innovative farmers, the development of gene bank and local seed propagation, village grain banks for local food security, development of micro-credit system, income generation through value addition, social cultural programs, support to mitigate natural calamity, intensive and nutritionally diversified farming systems for women (e.g. kitchen gardens), and the overall adoption of mixed cropping patterns. In my interview, Dr. Kate acknowledged that changing farmers’ mindsets/psychology around giving up chemicals is of utmost importance and in order to do this, speaking in economic terms with CBA is necessary since farmers are concerned with yield and profit (which I couldn’t exactly do in Punjab but wanted to). He also shed light on my Watson topic explicitly, noting how the generation that came after the Green Revolution is completely cut off from traditional practices, so even if they wanted to “go back,” they don’t have the knowledge or support. I asked how he differentiates between traditional agriculture and modern agro-ecological farming and he said:

Traditional agriculture had three basic principles:

1. Soil health (organic manure, mixed cropping, agroforestry etc.)

2. Use of sturdy seeds (many that were specific to local agro-climatic conditions and saved by farmers)

3. Biodiversity of crops (e.g. 13 different crops grown on one field)

In contrast, farming today is governed by market demand, evident in the cultivation of primarily cash crops. He described the model as such: farmers borrow money from moneylenders, procure inputs from the market, put inputs into the soil, grow crops demanded by the market, sell to the market, and use income to buy food – where is the logic in this? Of course farmers need to procure other items for the household, but this model makes little sense when farmers are losing out at almost every stage. Dr. Kate said, “Agriculture used to be based on meeting the needs of the family. And it’s not that we want to just go back to the traditional system – we want to go one step ahead: agroecology. Agroecology is a modern branch of science (holistic and based on ecology) born in Berkeley, CA that says we have to recycle resources and emphasizes biodiversity, optimum productivity (not “maximum productivity”) with efficient use of inputs from local resources.” But what differentiates traditional and agroecological farming are the challenges: “in the past, the land to man ratio was different (the population was less and land was more). Now we have to go for more intensive farming (traditional system had some fallow land during rotation and now we can’t do that). This may involve moving toward permaculture (intensive and ecological), whereas the old system was horizontal, now we have to look at vertical, multi-tier cropping (challenge today: how to grow more in same area with local inputs).” I asked about critiques that permaculture is labor intensive and inefficient and he said to remember that for the large majority of small farmers in developing countries, permaculture may be more appropriate here because it is labor oriented and mechanization is unnecessary. In Vidarbha, I learned more about the paradox of mechanization and the technological treadmill/trap. For example, because of mechanization, soybean is sown directly as a monocrop (if you plant pigeon pea in between, it is difficult to harvest). Farmers are essentially forced to use combine harvesters because the harvest season for soya is short and labor shortages necessitate machines. What is most sad is that farmers know that massive machines are not ideal, but the labor shortage demands them and most farmers realize that mixed cropping is better but it’s a vicious cycle since monocropping is easier in a mechanized context. So how do we get out of the trap?

Both theoretical and practical learning, as well as stark visual comparisons dominated my time in Vidarbha. Avinash sat down with me and gave me a basic lesson in watershed development; colleagues at the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture explained different pesticide management techniques (comparing integrated pest management (IPM) with non-pesticidal management (NPM)) and the seed certification process; at CSA, I also read about various agriculture policies including the Seed Bill and the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India Bill; at the local polytechnic institute in Wardha, I learned about Insecticide Resistance Management (IRM); and with Dr. Tarak Kate at Dharamitra, I learned about the importance of data-driven studies directly comparing organic and chemical farming systems.

I also encountered my fair share of conspiracy theorists while in Vidarbha. From Subhash Palekar’s Zero Budget Spiritual Farming to Ram's assertions that the mealy bug is a mutant insect genetically engineered by the West to a farmer activist and quasi-Marxist who is obsessed with subsidies and fair labour systems. Although I could relate to at least some aspect of each of these individual’s arguments, their extremism, ideology, and rhetoric turned me off. On the one hand, I found myself playing devil’s advocate and wanting to challenge their poorly supported assertions, but on the other hand, I’ve decided that I could spend my time in more productive ways than engaging heavily with conspiracy theorists.

I did meet one remarkable woman who stands out in my memory: Dr. Vibha Gupta, director of Magan Sangrahalaya. Essentially her father’s protégé, Vibha is working to continue the Gandhian-based philosophy and mission of MSS, while the main objective is “bring to the fore indigenous skills of the village artisans, stemming from the accumulated traditional knowledge, and facilitate its interaction with the recent knowledge of science and technology. To innovate technologies that could be converted into sustainable business opportunities at the grassroots level.” Just now, I have really begun to notice the difference between Indian Swadeshi (self-reliance) and Tanzania’s dependence on foreign aid. It seemed that every time I visited an NGO in Tanzania, they were interested in discussing how I could introduce them to donors in the West. In contrast, Dr. Gupta refuses to take funds from the government because she does not believe they are helping farmers. Instead, her model focuses on totally decentralized production (one of Gandhi’s economic philosophies) at the village level (e.g. food processing, natural farming, dairy, khadi and textiles, non-violent leather, pottery, bamboo, metal, glasswork etc.) to promote entrepreneurship among farmers and also having three centralized points of sale to market their products – emphasis on appropriate technology, training, “research, development and dissemination of Khadi and village industries, agriculture, dairy etc. along with the display and demonstrate of their production processes.” In response to this, I asked Dr. Gupta about localization and the fact that urban centers cannot be self-sufficient. She responded by saying that is the point – urban centers should not exist, though she did acknowledge that urban dwellers should at least make efforts to produce 10-20% of what they consume, instead of putting pressure and making demands on rural villages to provide for them. Moreover, we talked about the importance of closing the loops in terms of waste management, energy production and consumption, etc.

Dr. Gupta also shed light on the comparison between Punjab and Vidarbha in that farmers in Punjab are accustomed to seeing abundance and for them to settle for anything less would be impossible (it is also important to remember that Punjab did not choose to be the breadbasket of India and instead has been basically selected and forced to provide grain for the country. And although they have high production and a wealthy lifestyle compared to other regions, they are paying the price in health effects and environmental degradation). In contrast, dryland farmers of Vidarbha have always been marginal and because they are mostly producing for household consumption (at least half), then they should be even more concerned with producing organically. And because of their historically marginal production, they are very malleable and willing to try anything to improve their dire straits. She shares the view of many people I’ve met in India: it is the multi-national corporations that have come in and are dictating Indian policy (in collusion with the government, and she pointed out that her mass movement is very anti-government). A startling example is that despite village protest, Coca-Cola is setting up factories inside forests because of the abundance of raw materials such as timber and water. This is creating problems for farms too as once productive forests with an abundance of fruits and natural food are either being bulldozed or replaced by timber forests, which is driving wild animals such as boars and monkeys to feed on crops in the villagers’ farms.

I felt that I connected with Dr. Gupta on a very deep level – maybe this was because she is a strong, independent woman and I feel that in this time, I can relate and I also found myself comforted since most of my professional interactions have been with men since the beginning of my fellowship. We exchanged stories about our family lives, travel experiences, and common passions for activism and advocating for farmers. I found her to be very inspirational.