Organic farming not helpful to protect biodiversity: Biodiversity board chairman George Thomas

The conversation about organic farming is now sparked by the crisis in Sri Lanka. How do you think organic farming has affected the Lankan economy?

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2019 said the country will adopt organic farming in 10 years. But he hastened things and banned the import of chemical fertilizers in April 2022. The depletion of foreign exchange reserves could be what led to such a drastic step. But, with this, certain crops showed an immediate drop in production. The production of onion, tea, rice plant, vegetables and banana showed results in six months. These crops require a fair amount of fertilizer. However, coconut palms can take up to 1 year to show impact. Rice production fell by about 20 percent in six months. The price shot up about 50 percent. In tea, they lost around USD 425 million. Mathrubhumi has published articles on the impact. I’m not going to narrate it anymore.

Unlike developed countries, organic farming in third world countries is not run by agricultural experts. It is the same in India and Kerala. I am not naming anyone here. But agricultural colleges or agricultural departments don’t play much of a role in this. That’s what happened in Sri Lanka too, I think. A committee was charged with implementing it. Agriculture experts had warned the government about the result.

Switching 100 percent farming to organic in one day was the problem. No country in the world has done this. In Europe, the current rate is only eight percent. Their goal is to convert 25 percent of their agriculture to organic by 2030. That’s the maximum. Because they have to consider the food security of their people. You have to control the price. In addition, about 30 percent of the performance reduction must be managed. Experts decide on these things in Europe. In the US, organic farming is now below one percent.

Is organic farming bad for food security?

Absolutely. Previously, we had no data on this. But now, reputable magazines like ‘Nature’ have published articles comparing organic farming data with conventional farming. A research article says that a reduction of about 30 percent will be seen in the production of organic agriculture.

To put this in perspective, if someone wants to take an Ayurveda treatment, that’s fine. But they cannot say that modern hospitals should be closed. Both must coexist. Whoever wants to dedicate himself to organic farming, let him do it. We can also set goals for Kerala. For example, the government may decide to convert 20 percent of agriculture in Kerala to organic. But beyond that, it is a threat to food security. This is the view I formed based on the data and also my experience.

[As per the latest reports, Kerala has already converted 57,000 hectares of land into organic farming out of the targeted 87,000 hectares. The 100-day action plan of the government aims to convert 10,000 hectares of land. This is less than five per cent of the net sown area in Kerala]

You have said that organic agriculture is an agenda of the capitalist countries. Can you give more details?

‘The tragedy of the commons’ is an essay by Garrett Hardin, an American professor of human ecology. It was published in 1968. One way to understand the impact of a research paper is to see how many times it was cited. This particular essay was cited more than 49,000 times. It is a very large number. It is an anti-socialist concept that says that if something is public property, people will act irresponsibly, which is not the case with private property. Based on this, he wrote another essay called ‘Living in a lifeboat’ in 1974. A lifeboat cannot carry more people than its carrying capacity. The ship will sink. He said that capitalist countries that help poor countries with food aid and modern technology to improve productivity will put capitalist countries in trouble.

Both articles, one published on ‘Science’ and the other on ‘BioScience’, had even influenced the US political decision. The US used to dump the extra wheat they produced into the sea instead of giving it to poor countries.

We can see that the campaign against the Green Revolution started after this. Vandana Shiva’s ‘Green Revolution Violence’ comes in the 1980s. I guess organic farming started getting attention after these articles were published.

The ‘Kerala State Organic Agriculture Policy, Strategy and Action Plan’ was prepared by KSBB. Its aim is to “Make Kerala agriculture sustainable, rewarding and competitive by ensuring poison-free water, soil and food for all citizens”.

That policy is no longer valid. The policy was drawn up in 2010 and its validity ended in 2020.

Does KSBB plan to update it?

No. Organic farming does not help improve biodiversity. As I said, it gives a lower yield compared to conventional farming. This, in turn, forces us to expand farmland for more produce. How do we get more land? By cutting down the forest. That is Borlaug’s hypothesis. (The Borlaug hypothesis, named for Norman Borlaug, the founder of the green revolution, states that improvements in agricultural technology will allow farmers to produce more food on a given piece of land, allowing the food supply to grow without causing increased deforestation).

In 1951, the Indian population was 36 million rupees. Food production was 51 million tons. In 2000, it became 197 million tons, and in 2021 – 310 million tons.

In 1950, in the world, 59.2 million tons of food were produced on 60 million hectares of land. In 2000, production increased to 207 crore tons from the same amount of land. It is because the capacity increased by adopting modern technology. We can also see that the rate of deforestation decreased with this.

If there were no modern technology, according to calculations, only 400 million people could live in this world today. Now the earth has 7.9 billion inhabitants. It is possible thanks to fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation.

The policy also states the effect of traditional agriculture as: “Microorganisms decreased; the soil lost its fertility and vitality; the demand for water increased and, over time, the traditional varieties disappeared. In short, the centuries-old practices stopped. The eternal relationship between the farmer and the farmland was lost.”

To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Agricultural biodiversity and general biodiversity (such as forests and the sea) should be treated separately. Agricultural diversity exists only if human beings exist. We did agricultural diversity. But when farming has to go beyond mere subsistence and produce income for the farmer, he will naturally choose better-performing varieties. So it is a fact that certain local varieties have become extinct in the meantime. Humans have found a solution for it. An organization based in Rome, Bioversity International, protects around 80 lakh varieties. The National Office of Plant Genetic Resources of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research coordinates efforts in India. Similarly, arrangements are also made for the protection of animals and insects. Around 1 lakh of rice plant varieties are protected in the Philippines. All of these are in the lab. We cannot protect these variants in the field. Certain farmers, we call them custodian farmers, like Cheruvayal Raman from Wayanad, are doing it. But will the next generation continue it? we don’t know. That’s why we use labs. We can breed them and produce better varieties in laboratories.

These are inevitable changes due to population growth.

KSBB is mandated to advise the state government on biodiversity matters. Does KSBB plan to present any recommendations on organic farming?

KSBB has taken on some projects in agricultural diversity. But we have the agricultural university to advise the government on such matters. Let them do it.

Nirmala Sitaraman in the 2019 budget said “Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) is the future of India”. ZBNF inventor says cost of chemical fertilizers leads to farmer suicide. How good is zero budget farming?

Zero budget natural farmers and organic farmers are at a crossroads. ZBNF says organic farming is more dangerous than conventional farming. That is what Subhash Palekar, the father of ZBNF, said in his book.

Agriculture in North India is completely different from Kerala. They have irrigated agriculture and rainfed agriculture. They are completely different. Punjab, Haryana and western UP have irrigated agriculture. They have good performance. They never support ZBNF. They are the food baskets of India. Meanwhile, various parts of Madhya Pradesh, Andhra and Karnataka have rainfed agriculture. They are organic by default. They have no money to buy fertilizer. They also have no water.

The union government had created a committee to study the possibilities of ZBNF, headed by the Vice Chancellor of the Telangana State Agricultural University, Praveen Rao. He recommended restricting the experiments to rainfed areas. I hope that the union government will implement the project based on your recommendations.