Why we need to go Organic: Responding to the agrarian crisis and climate
chaos***
Dr. Vandana Shiva
Agriculture is in deep crisis***. The crisis is both human and ecological. Two
dimensions of the human crisis are the suicides of farmers and the growth of
hunger and malnutrition***.
The agrarian crisis leading to farmers suicides is a result of debt, and debt
is a result of the convergence of rising costs of non sustainable and
inappropriate production systems and falling prices of agricultural products
due to unjust and unfair trade patterns***.
Financial, ecological non-sustainability of production is based on
(i) Costly seeds that are non renewable(Govt Seed farms should
sell cheap), cannot be saved and regrown by farmers and hence add an entirely
new financial burden on the peasantry? or Nation?. These seeds are also
untested and unreliable(then why buy?), and have been brought to the market
through self-certification.{ Act Cleverly!}
(ii) Costly chemicals(Do Not Use!), which drain the peasant’s
scarce capital and leave agro ecosystems more fragile and impoverished, hence
increasing the vulnerability of farming.
(iii) Monocultures of cash crops, which further aggravate the risks
of crop failure due to pests and diseases and climate change.
While farmers are dying due to debt and negative incomes the poor are being
denied their right to food. 30% rural households in India were eating 1,600
kcal in 1998 compared to 1,820 kcal in 1989(who Told You?. In 1999-2000 almost
77% rural population consumed less than the poverty line calorie requirement of
2,400 kcal??. One third of all hungry children in the world are today in India.
Meantime, urban children are victims of food related diseases such as obesity
and diabetes. Globally one billion suffer the malnutrition of lack of food and
two billion are victims of malnutrition related to junk food and nutritionally
empty calories that the industrialized food system is producing. { now she is
copying somebody’s script}
The roots of farmers’ suicides and hunger are the same. They lie in a capital
intensive, chemical(which) intensive model of industrial agriculture, which is
getting farmers into debt(Repeat!). Indebted farmers are committing suicide on
the one hand and facing starvation on the other(Small talk-do something!!).
Farmers in debt sell everything they have produced to pay back creditors, and
then buy food at three to four times the price at which they sold their
produce(defies logic!!). The growing polarization?? between producer prices and
consumer prices is lowering farmers’ incomes and increasing the costs of staple
foods.
Bio diverse organic (apple vsOrange) farming addresses both dimensions of the
human crisis. It lowers costs of production by getting rid of chemicals( means
no fertilizer?, thus helping farmers escape the debt trap. Through fair trade,
local markets, direct marketing, short distribution chains and multiple ways of
bringing consumers and producers closer, producer incomes increase while
consumer costs do not, by cutting out super profits of agribusiness. However,
to solve the different aspects of the food and agriculture crisis, from farm
suicides to starvation, we need an ecological paradigm of agriculture, based on
biodiversity and agroecology*, not on input substitution paradigm, for
producing monocultures of a handful of globally traded commodities. As our new
report “Biodiversity Based Organic Farming : A New Paradim * for Food Security
and Food Safety”, shows biodiverse organic farming produces more food, of
better nutrition quality and higher incomes for farmers. It can put an end to
farmers suicides and starvation.[Sometimes you hear of Tech-savvy Soth-Indian
farmers selling only via internet!)
A paradigm shift from monocultures of the mind to diversity as a way of seeing
allows productivity to be defined authentically and holistically, inclusive of
all outputs and all inputs. The pseudo productivity of industrial chemical
agriculture is based on limiting output to only globally traded commodities
(rice, wheat, corn, cotton and soya) and reducing input to human labour alone.
On the one hand, it hides the production loss of diverse outputs – greens,
nitrogen fixing pulse legumes, fodder, fuel, vegetables, and fruits. On the
other hand, it excludes the higher inputs of energy and resources for
industrial farming. A negative productivity in which more inputs are used than
the system produces as food is thus falsely rendered as the only way to
increase productivity.
Further, built into this distorted productivity is the dispensability of small
farmers. If productivity is defined on the basis of labour inputs alone,
removing farmers from the land becomes the basis of “increasing agricultural
productivity”. Farmers’ die while the false productivity grows.
And when people working the land and rebuilding the soil are substituted by
chemicals and machines and replaced by “energy slaves” which use fossil fuels
costs of production go up, as do costs to the environment.
The ecological crisis engendered by industrial chemical farming include:
1 Toxic contamination
2 Biodiversity erosion
3 Water depletion
4 Desertification of soils
5 Pollution of the atmosphere because of fossil fuels, which
is leading to climate change.
Climate change could rapidly evolve into climate catastrophe if greenhouse gas
emissions are not reduced.
Industrial agriculture, with its chemical intensive and fossil fuel intensive
inputs is responsible for large contributions of greenhouse gases. It is
responsible for 25 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, 60 percent
of methane gas emissions and 80 percent of nitrous oxide, all powerful
greenhouse gases.
Nitrous oxide is 200 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas
and is produced by the use of nitrogenous fertilizers. Around 70 million tones
of nitrogen fertilizers are used in agriculture contributing to 22 million
tones of annual nitrous oxide emissions.
Emissions of carbon from the burning of fossil fuels for agricultural purposes
in England and Germany were as much as 0.046 and 0.053 tonnes per ha, while
they are only 0.007 i.e. roughly seven times lower in non-industrial
agriculture. (Ref: Edward Goldsmith – How to feed people under a regime of
climate change, Ecologist)
Industrial agriculture uses ten times more energy as input than it produces as
calories for food. On the other hand biodiverse ecological organic agriculture
absorbs carbon dioxide and puts it into the soil as humus. Humus also helps
reduce the impact of draughts and floods, which are becoming more frequent and
intense as a result of climate change. Biodiverse organic farming thus
contributes to mitigation of and adaption to climate change resulting from the
use of fossil fuels and emission of greenhouse gases.
The recently released Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change released
by the U.K. government warns that unless radical action is taken, climate
change could seriously threaten society.
Reducing emissions through shifting from fossil fuel based industrial
agricultural systems to biodiverse organic systems and reducing “food miles”
can contribute significantly to mitigation of climate chaos.
Biodiverse organic farming and localized food systems can solve all aspects of
the ecological crisis caused by industrial agriculture. Toxic pollution is
avoided, biodiversity rejuvenated and water conserved. Navdanya research has
shown that the higher the biodiversity, the higher is the productivity of farms
and higher the income of small farmers.
Destruction of water resources through water waste is one of the biggest
environmental costs of industrial agriculture and the green revolution.
Large-scale intensive irrigation is not related to good agriculture or more
food availability. Organic farming methods protect the agro ecosystem from
water run off, evaporation and soil erosion. Mulch and humus prevents soil
erosion. Mulches also absorb the impact of rain and irrigation water thereby
preventing erosion, soil compaction and crusting. Mulched soils absorb water
faster. Mulches prevent splashing of mud and certain plant disease organisms
onto plants and flowers during rain or overhead irrigation and helps in
conservation of soil. Mulch also helps conserve moisture as it reduces 10 to 25
percent soil moisture loss from evaporation. Mulches help keep the soil well
aerated by reducing soil compaction that results when raindrops hit the soil.
They also reduce water runoff and soil erosion. Studies have shown that mulch
also enhances burrowing activity of some species of earthworms (e.g.
Hyperiodrillus spp. and Eudrilus spp. (Lal, 1976), which improves transmission
of water through the soil profile (Aina, 1984) and reduces surface crusting and
runoff and improves soil moisture storage in the root zone. Lal (1976) reports
an annual saving of 32 per cent of rainfall in water runoff from mulching in
humid Western Nigeria.
Research has validated the hypothesis that the percentage of organic content in
soil directly relates to its water holding capacity. Scientists have reported
that for every 1% of organic matter content, the soil can hold 16,500 gallons
of plant available water per acre of soil to one foot deep (Source: ATTRA),
i.e., roughly 1.5 quarts of water per cubic foot of soil or each per cent of
organic matter.
Most importantly biodiverse, organic, local food can contribute significantly
to the mitigation of and adaption to climate change by reducing the use of
fossil fuels in inputs and in food miles.
Organic farming has become a human and ecological imperative in our times.
There is not one but many reasons why we must go organic. We must overcome the
inertia and the laziness that industrialization as a paradigm has created.
Farmers’ suicides and climate chaos are a wake up call for a new paradigm for
food and farming. Biodiverse organic agriculture offers us this new paradigm.
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Coloring/highlighting a few lines--mine- mm
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