(This story originally appeared in on Feb 7, 2016)

Naturally Pricey

Government Intervention

Efforts for Awareness

It’s 8:00 am on a Sunday and outside Denzong Cinema in Gangtok ’s Lal Bazar, the otherwise languid atmosphere is punctured by grocers of two kinds. On one side of the cinema are those who sell vegetables, fruits and spices sourced from outside Sikkim , mostly from Siliguri, 115 km south in West Bengal. On the other side of the cinema, almost completing a triangle, are farmers from the state who have come to sell their own produce.Both groups are in the process of unloading their wares off trucks and chaos reigns supreme with decisions to be made regarding who should climb atop the vehicles to get the gunny sacks down and how much the drivers need to be paid. The distance separating them is not more than 200 metres and, while the traditional grocers are soon set for business, the farmers are nowhere close.The latter are taking their produce from the trucks to a refurbished space on the top floor of a shopping complex. Called the ‘Sikkim Organic Market’, it is only a couple of weeks old. While earlier the farmers did not have a dedicated area in the market, now they do. It is part of the state government’s plan to push organic farming Two hours later, all the stalls in the market, represented by farmers’ groups from different parts of the state, are occupied. They are selling everything from pulses to greens to oranges to pickles made from the local dalle chillies, all of which are organic — meaning they were grown without the use of chemicals. The organic alternatives to chemical fertilisers are cow manure and compost from plant residues, among others, and the alternatives to pesticides include clay and extracts from neem, garlic and mushroom.As we approach Lalita Tiwari’s stall, a customer picks up a bundle of greens and asks her how much they cost. When she says Rs 20, he raises his eyebrows and mutters something and walks away. If Tiwari is disappointed she doesn’t let on. She just smiles and says there will be enough customers who will react differently. She represents the Parijat Self Help Group of Lower Sadam, a village in south Sikkim district, about 75 km from Gangtok.While the price difference between the organic and conventional varieties of some vegetables may not be so stark, with the organic variety 20-25% pricier, among spices like turmeric the difference could be three to four times. “When people ask us why it’s so expensive, we tell them it’s organic and it’s a lot of work. Most people understand,” says Tiwari, who does business worth between Rs 2,000 and Rs 3,000 a day.Raju Chhetri, another farmer from near Gangtok, says the gulf in prices does not worry him, since any delays in transporting vegetables from Siliguri could bring their prices up to a par with the local varieties. Sikkim, a small state in east India that borders China, Nepal and Bhutan, had a population of just 0.61 million in 2011, but had tourist arrivals of 0.56 million in 2014. The tourists combined with the floating population necessitate the sourcing of foods from neighbouring states like West Bengal. The farmers in the market, including Tiwari and Chhetri, say they have never used chemicals in their fields. S Anbalagan, executive director, Sikkim Organic Mission (SOM), says the state’s use of chemical-based fertilisers was 8-10 kg per hectare per year in the early 2000s compared to 200 kg in some large states.That could be one of the reasons why it was not hard for the Sikkim government to convince around 66,000 farmers dependent on agriculture to switch to organic farming. The government in 2003, led by chief minister Pawan Chamling, made a declaration in the assembly to make the state entirely organic. “We initially targeted five crops — buckwheat, ginger, turmeric, large cardamom and orchid — and then we expanded to other crops,” says Anbalagan. After pilot projects covering about 8,150 hectares, SOM was established in 2010 and now about 99% of the state’s cultivable area of 77,000 hectares is under organic management.Prime minister Narendra Modi was in Gangtok on January 18 to inaugurate the Sikkim Organic Festival. He referred to Sikkim’s strides in organic farming on his radio address, Mann ki Baat, on January 31, and spoke about two young entrepreneurs who had started up an organic farming venture.Crucial to Sikkim’s transformation was the government’s decision to bear the cost of the project, paying Rs 8,400 per hectare to have the land certified organic for the first three years. The government has spent Rs 66 crore on SOM since its inception. The certification of the land has been done by six of twodozen accredited agencies who follow the standards laid down in the National Programme for Organic Production, which has been in place since 2001. Aiding the farmers with the requisite knowhow and paperwork are 14 service providers, including government entities and private companies. Under a state law, anybody found using or storing chemical fertilisers or pesticides can be penalised Rs 1 lakh and/or imprisoned for up to three months.According to the standards, it takes three years for a piece of farmland to be certified organic; the certifying agency assesses the land once a year during the period.The farmer will have to let the agency know what she plans to grow in that soil and the inputs she is going to use. The produce from that soil will naturally be organic, unless they are processed, which has a different procedure.During the three years, the soil will cleanse itself of the chemicals and no particular treatment is required. After the first three years, the land to has be certified every year. In case of serious violations, the land is sanctioned and can be declared organic only after another three years. Sandeep Bhargava, chief executive of Jaipur-based OneCert Asia Agri Certification, which has certified around 40,000 hectares in Sikkim organic, says it is important that farmers have access to the market. “In Rajasthan, once the government stopped funding the certification, some farmers went back (to conventional farming). Only those farmers who have been provided a link to the market have continued organic farming.”One of the reasons why market linkage is essential is the drop in yield of 20-50% in the initial years of conversion. While the value of the produce may increase, there have to be takers for it. The organic food market in India in 2014 was estimated to be $0.36 billion, which is expected to nearly treble to $1.36 billion. The total area in India where organic farming is practised dropped to 4.72 million hectares in 2013-14, the last year for which data is available, from 5.21 million hectares the previous year. Even the quantity of India’s organic produce dropped 7.5% in the same period to 1.24 million tonnes.Since about three-fourths of India’s organic food produce is exported — oilseeds account for 70% of the exports and North America and the European Union are the biggest importers of Indian organic food — food companies gripe that the supply is not meeting the local demand. Sanjeev Azad, executive director of operations at Conscious Food, one of India’s largest processed organic food makers, says for a farmer selling most of his produce to an exporter is better than selling to 500 retail outlets in India. “The domestic market gets what is left after exports.”Renzino Lepcha, chief operating officer of Mevedir, an agri company that is one of the service providers to farmers in SOM, believes organic farmers will have to do more than just grow crops. “They have to value-add, as in case of dried chillies and ginger, and sell them to organic food companies.” Value addition comes in handy for certain crops in remote, landlocked states like Sikkim, from where transporting perishable goods is both laborious and expensive.The demand for organic food products is for now largely restricted to a small section of the country’s urban population. According to TechSci Research, organic food accounted for just 2.5% of organised retail stores’ total food sales in 2012-13. Awareness about organic food is growing thanks to increasing evidence about the detrimental effects of inorganic food on our health and of chemicals on our land.Umendra Dutt, executive director of Kheti Virasat Mission, a non-governmental organisation, says organic farming is not mere agriculture. “It’s about man’s relationship with food. Even the poorest of the poor should be able to eat organic food.” For that to happen, he says, organic farming, or ecological agriculture as he terms it, should be mainstreamed. “The syllabus in agricultural universities should change. Agri education is stifling sensitivity to land and food.”Besides Sikkim, the states that are active in organic farming are Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, which are the top three in India in terms of absolute area under organic farming (See Madhya Pradesh has more area…). Other states that have also been active in promoting organic farming include Kerala and Mizoram, the latter passing a legislation in the assembly for the same in 2004, the first state to do so.While these states’ efforts are certainly commendable, they are only the first step in the long-term sustainability of organic agriculture, which requires an active market for its produce, both here and abroad, which in itself is a result of understanding the centrality of food to our well-being.