By Arpita Mukherjee and Avantika Kapoor
Dr Arpita Mukherjee is a Professor and Avantika Kapoor is a research assistant at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), New Delhi.
In January 2016, the north-eastern state of Sikkim received global attention when Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared Sikkim as Indias first fully organic state. Untouched by the Green Revolution, which led to significant increase in the use of chemical inputs in states such as Punjab, farmers in this Himalayan state have been practising traditional methods of farming, which is by default, organic.
The organic movement in Sikkim gained visibility in the year 2003 when the Chief Minister, Pawan Chamling, announced the decision to adopt organic farming and to convert the entire state into an organic one. The reasons to do so were as follows:
- Organic farming would help in retaining the soil fertility.
- It would protect the environment and ecology.
- It would ensure healthy living.
- It would also reduce the risk of health ailments.
The state government was aware that developed countries were banning chemical inputs, and the Chief Minister in his speech to the Parliament specifically referred to the ban on 11 chemical pesticides in the 1980s by the government of United Kingdom.
The transition to organic
Sikkim’s economy is largely dependent on agriculture and tourism, and eco-tourism is a niche area of tourism. Thus, by promoting organic farming, the state government wanted to fulfil the dual objective of supporting agriculture and tourism through the concept of an organic village. To move forward with this objective, in 2004, the government came up with a working policy to implement programmes for organic farming and in August 2010, it launched the Sikkim Organic Mission to implement the action plan and policies related to organic farming in the state.
The target was to convert the entire state into an organic one by the year 2015. The main objectives of the Organic Mission were to frame an organic farming policy for the state, prepare a roadmap of organic farming and implement the programmes of organic farming with a systematic approach for achieving the target set by the state government, develop and explore markets of organic commodities produced by the state and lastly, to develop linkage between the organic farmers and their market.
According to the statistics provided by the Sikkim Organic Mission, out of a total area of 7.29 lakh hectares in the state, farming covers only about 10.2 percent, and the remaining area includes forest, pastures, barren, and uncultivated land. Sikkim has a diverse range of crops including maize, rice, buckwheat, pulses, soybean, mustard, orange, pears, ginger, cardamom, turmeric, cherry pepper, peas, bean, tomato and potato.
It accounts for the largest share of Indias production of cardamom while hardly any chemical inputs have been used in the cultivation of this crop. The state government wanted to covert the 10.2 percent of the cultivable land to fully organic, without making any changes in the crops that were grown.
Implementation of the proposed organic policies
In its organic policy document, the state government noted that organic farming would reduce the cost of production by 25-30 percent and organic products will fetch a premium price in both the domestic and export markets. While organic farming practices can lead to higher incomes and profits for the farmers, the state government acknowledged that farmers need proper training in organic methods of cultivation and access to good quality organic inputs at subsidised rates.
For this, different programmes were launched which included the adoption of bio-villages, subsidisation of vermi-compost pit constructions, promotion of the use of bio-fertilisers and programmes to ensure the availability of certified organic manures. More than 100 villages were adopted as bio-villages till 2009, benefitting more than 10,000 farmers.
The state government farms in Nazitam and Mellidara were converted to Organic Centres of Excellence for conducting organic farming demonstrations and trials. Since third-party certification is mandatory for exports to key markets such as the United States and the European Union, an autonomous organisation, Sikkim State Organic Certification Agency (SSOCA), was set up in the year 2015 under the state government to help farmers get third-party certification at lower costs and as per the standards and norms of different export markets.
Support from the central government
More recently, the state government initiatives have also been supported by several central government schemes under the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA), such as the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) scheme. This is a centre and state government partnership scheme in which organic clusters are provided financial assistance of INR 50,000 per hectare during the conversion (from conventional farming land to organic farming land) period of three years.
Under another scheme of the central government, the Mission Organic Value Chain Development for North Eastern Region (MOVCDNER), assistance is provided for cluster development, input production, supply of seeds and planting materials, setting up of functional infrastructure, establishment of integrated processing units, refrigerated transportation, cold storage chamber, branding, labelling, packaging, hiring of space and assistance in third-party organic certification for the development of the organic value chain in north-eastern states including Sikkim.
Critics and their opinions
While Sikkim has been praised for its forward-looking policy on organic practices, its experience in developing organic farming has not been free of criticism. Critics argued that the lack of connectivity of the state to key markets and an underdeveloped logistics supply chain has led to the wastage of organic produce, which has a shorter shelf life than conventional food products.
Further, Sikkim receives a lot of conventional food products from neighbouring states such as West Bengal, which are sold along with the organic products and thus, there can be an incidence of product contamination. Last year, the media extensively covered how orange farmers have been adversely affected by pests such as fruit flies, leading to a loss of income and market share. Lack of pest control techniques and proper netting can lead to pest infestation leading to huge losses of produce, as was suffered by the orange farmers in Sikkim.
A model for others to follow
In spite of these issues, Sikkims experience in moving towards the organic has largely been positive and is applauded by environmental and ecological experts in India and globally. In the first place, the state government showed a strong political will and policy consistency, along with well-defined targets and implementation plans, which can be adopted by other states. The state government also initiated policies to make possession of any type of agro-chemicals or pesticides a punishable offence. This is a good initiative which has been followed by neighbouring countries such as Bhutan.
At the national level, the central government may learn from the best practices and take initiatives to at least ban chemical inputs which are banned by developed countries such as the United States and the UK. In Sikkim, efforts have been made at different levels to raise awareness on organic farming. For example, the study of organic farming has been added to the school curriculums.
With a high incidence of cancer in Punjab and farmers dying due to inhaling pesticides in Maharashtra, at the national level, it is important to raise awareness about the harmful effects of chemical inputs and the need to move towards sustainable agriculture practices. To connect farmers and producers to markets, Sikkim State Co-operative Supply and Marketing Federation (SIMFED), the marketing federation of Sikkim, planned to launch 400 retail outlets throughout India to popularise the products of this state. Similar initiatives can be undertaken by other state governments as well.
To conclude, organic agriculture can help India to achieve its sustainable development goals, and double farmers income by 2022, if others states, especially some of the north-eastern and hilly states, adopt Sikkims model of organic farming.