The Green Revolution, long lauded as averting mass famine, turns out to have an attributed dark side in India: farmer suicide. Katherine Martinko on Treehugger.com comments:
Amrita Bhoomi offers an alternative to this deadly cycle. The centre’s educational philosophy is based largely on the teachings of Shri Subhash Palekar, the charismatic guru of “zero budget natural farming“, who teaches that a farmer doesn’t need anything other than what s/he has available locally to maximize soil fertility. The method uses home-brewed concoctions made from fresh cow dung (it must be an indigenous cow), cow urine (the older the better), jaggery (coarse palm sugar), and lentil flour to promote microbacterial growth in the soil. In Gifford’s words:
“Zero budget natural farming is amazing because it’s not top down; it’s informal, decentralized; there’s no central organizer, no revenue or paid staff, no bank account, and there are already millions of people practicing it.”
The approach is not all that unusual. Amrita Bhoomi’s director Chukki Nanjundawsamy told FoodTank last year:
“Agroecology isn’t new to Indian agriculture. The Green Revolution technologies that wiped out agroecology happened only 50 years ago. Before that, agroecology was everywhere… I’m proud of how this movement has evolved. Young farmers are joining. They know what’s going on with the agrarian crisis and are choosing agroecology as a way forward.”
Amrita Bhoomi wants to reclaim crops that once were staples in the Indian diet, such as millet, or ragi. Ragi was displaced by white rice, a more chemically responsive crop, when the Green Revolution enabled farmers to practice water-intensive, paddy-style agriculture, but Indians’ health has suffered as a result; there are 50 million cases of type 2 diabetes, the highest rate in the world, that are largely attributed to refined white rice. The centre is pioneering millet production and hoping to get it added to the public distribution system.
I was not aware that rice was more carbohydrate-intensive than other crops. I’m always wary of the charismatic, since they motivate people to do irrational things, so I’d like to see this put under a dispassionate microscope.
