Abstract
The article seeks to look at the current organic boom in the state of Kerala as a counter-discourse to the agrarian crisis and the impending issues of food security, food price and health hazards in the state in the wake of the liberalisation policies and World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements. The Polanyan notion of countermovement (1944) is used to unearth Kerala’s agrarian crisis of the 1990s that stemmed up from the commoditisation of agriculture, which ultimately paved way for an agrarian countermovement in the form of organic farming in the late 20th century. It is argued that organic agriculture signals the emergence of an agrarian counter-discourse promoting greater engagement of the farmers from the fringes. The primary data for the article were gathered out of two empirical projects carried out in 2015–2016.
Introduction
The objective of the article is to look at the new wave of organic agriculture as a countermovement to the agrarian crisis and the impending issues of food security, food price and health hazards in the state of Kerala, in the wake of the liberalisation policies and World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements. The article employs a political ecology perspective from the margins, as it is grounded in the concerns about the struggles over natural resources and the livelihoods of people within the context of the post-capitalist production regime in a liberalised economy. Based on the Polanyan notion of countermovement (1944), the article observes that Kerala’s agrarian crisis of the 1990s, stemming from the commodification of Kerala’s agrarian environment and the intensification of chemical-based, cash-crop agriculture, stimulated an ecological countermovement in the late 20th century. The article argues that organic agriculture signals the emergence of an agrarian counter-discourse, promoting greater engagement of the farmers from the fringes of the market-driven agrarian economy, which can shape into a radical form of state-led development and politics with civil society input.
The primary data for the article were gathered out of two empirical projects that I carried out in 2015–2016. (a) In June 2015, a 3-day UGC-sponsored national seminar on ‘Organic Agriculture and Food Security: Policy and Prospects’ was conducted in collaboration with the Department of Agriculture, Government of Kerala, and World Science Project, Louisiana State University, the USA, in Loyola College of Social Sciences, Thiruvananthapuram. The seminar provided a platform for a representative body of stakeholders from both within and outside the state to exchange ideas, views, problems and challenges on organic agriculture. It also facilitated an interface between the farmers and researchers, academicians and policymakers that enabled me to come to basic understanding of the status, nature, dynamics and issues related to organic farming. (b) Following this, I undertook an ethnographic study in the state among small farmers and homestead cultivators and conducted qualitative interviews with twenty-five farmers and ten key informants across the state.
Organic Boom
At the turn of the millennium, we observe two simultaneous developments in Kerala, which are interrelated. One is the publicity and controversy on the dangers and risks associated with conventional industrial agriculture in terms of food security, public health, environment and ethics. As agricultural products that are available in the state in general contained a high residue of pesticides and fertilisers, high concern and awareness at all quarters with regard to the availability of safe food developed. Currently, Kerala has an excessive dependence on neighbouring states for vegetables and fruits. According to an agricultural scientist, ‘75% of vegetables required for the use of Malayalees are crossing the border, in about 300 trucks on a daily basis’. In the light of this alarming situation, the state’s Food Safety Council carried out a field study at the vegetable production centres in Tamil Nadu and it revealed usage of high levels of chemical pesticides and fertilisers by farmers there. Similar studies by Kerala Agricultural University also pointed to the dangerous levels of pesticides in some common vegetables, including the residues of Profenofos, which is banned in India, except for tea and cotton (Devi, 2010). Having confronted with this grim reality, there were moves from the part of Government of Kerala, taking up the case with the respective government departments of Tamil Nadu to curb the use of pesticides in the cultivation of vegetables and fruits (
Further, studies have revealed the frightening link between high incidence of cancer in Kerala with high residues of fertilisers and pesticides in the vegetables and fruits Keralites consume (
Second, as a response to its agrarian crisis and problems, and a critique of chemical-dependent capitalist agriculture, there has been an emphatic move towards organic agriculture with the government adopting the Organic Farming Policy in order to promote organic methods in the state. Developed by the Biodiversity Board and Kerala’s Agriculture Department, the Kerala government released a policy document in 2010 on organic farming, with a concrete strategy and action plan. The policy document envisages that the state will produce organic food in 5 years and in the next 5 years it will ensure the conservation of agro-biodiversity. One major goals of this policy is to convert the entirety of Kerala—around 2,000,000 hectares—to organic farming within 10 years. As a general strategic approach, it thus stated:
the mission to convert Kerala into an organic state is to be achieved, focusing on potential crops and areas in a phased and compact manner, with the aim of converting a minimum of 20% of the cultivable land into entirely organic, every year and thus achieving the target within five years (Government of Kerala, 2010, p. 7).
Accordingly, one major strategy of the policy proposes to undertake a state-wide intensive campaign on organic farming in the form of a popular movement named Jaiva Keralam—Organic Kerala.
Kerala is one of the three states in the country (Sikkim and Uttaranchal being the other two states) to come up with such an aggressive policy on organic farming, especially when an appropriate national policy framework is yet to be laid down by the Central government. The Department of Agriculture has set up a cell for Promotion of Sustainable Agriculture and Organic Farming. It has also launched two brands, namely ‘Kerala Organic’ and ‘Kerala Naturals’, to market organic farm products. To encourage farmers to switch to organic farming, the government is planning to set up organic markets in different parts of the state. The state also plans to set up a biotech laboratory to ensure availability of quality farm inputs such as organic manure, bio-fertilisers and bio-control agents with the help of Kerala Agriculture University. In short, Kerala’s organic policy is now re-embedding market-driven agriculture within social relations in Kerala.
In the past 10–15 years, many farmers in Kerala, other than those who continued the traditional methods, have taken up organic farming quite earnestly (Balachandran, 2004; Thottathil, 2012). At present, there is an unprecedented drive in the state from homestead farmers primarily, along with NGOs, schools, colleges, universities, the youth wings, many socio-political organisations, popular cine actors and so on, aggressively engaging in organic farming, so much so that one may characterise this as ‘an era of organic boom’. Kerala now has an accredited organic-certifying agency catering to the needs of farmers. Domestic marketing of organic produce is also experimented in many places such as Organic Bazaar in Trivandrum, eco-shops in Thrissur and Kozhikode and Jaiva Krishi Sevana Kendram—Centre for Service of Organic Farming—in Kannur. Self-help groups of women are encouraged to undertake organic farming of vegetables in some panchayats (Kerala State Organic Farming Policy, GoK), and several Kudumbashree units—prosperity through women—(an internationally acclaimed women empowerment programme in Kerala) are engaged in organic farming and its marketing. Terrace organic cultivation seems to be the new wave, especially among urban dwellers.
Subsequently, seminars, awareness programmes and campaigns abound in the state, conscientising, propagating and promoting organic farming and organic products in combating the attendant problems of industrial agriculture. A movie titled ‘How Old Are You’ carried a loud message of organic farming as the pesticide-free, safe and sustainable mode of agriculture and food (
Industrial Agriculture Versus Organic Agriculture
A farmer activist who passionately indulges in alternative agriculture commented on the context that led people to turn to organic: ‘our forefathers did farming without any poison or chemical. Organic farming came into being when the ill effects of chemical fertilisers and insecticides, were known to people and it was suggested as an alternative to chemicals’. The antecedents that led to this ‘organic boom’ in the state have to be viewed in the national scene. As the policy document reiterates:
India has a long history of traditional farming, harnessing the annual floods and the subsequent alluvial deposits. Sustainability has been the hallmark of farming systems in India for centuries, growing the time tested, weather suited, traditional crops with or without additional organic inputs, but deeply interwoven with the ecological systems and climatic conditions. Harvest of the main crops is celebrated throughout the country.
Many of these age-old systems have disappeared in the wake of the post-independence era, when the main thrust was to produce more food for the ever-growing human population. The ignominy of the country’s dependence on Western developed nations for food and the politics of food aid practised by these nations added to the determination to be self-sufficient in food production by modernising agriculture in the pattern of the West. The Green Revolution, as this process came to be known, with a single slogan of ‘grow more food’, was a natural outcome of this national challenge to meet the growing food requirements. India embraced the principles of industrial agriculture fully.
The Green Revolution, in a way, fulfilled the aspirations by changing India from a food-importing to a food-exporting nation. ‘On the whole, production improved. We produce double the amount needed. But in the process we have made farming uneconomical and unattractive to all but a few’, commented an agricultural scientist and activist. In fact, the production of food grains from 50.8 million tonnes during 1950 rose to 108 million tonnes in 1970–1971 and 208.6 million tonnes in 2005–2006. However, the achievement was at the expense of the environment and the well-being of the people. A social scientist in the seminar thus rightly observed:
As part of the Green Revolution, widespread use of chemical fertilizers as well as insecticides was introduced in the country. This was inevitable for us and we got good results also. Later on the excessive use of chemical fertilizers and insecticides adversely affected the nature, animals and human beings.
The modernised practices employed in the Green Revolution, unmindful of the health of the ecosystem, led to seemingly irrevocable ecological and environmental catastrophes in the country. It essentially replaced the traditional varieties with high-yielding ones. These high-yielding varieties now recognised as ‘high-input varieties’ needed tonnes of fertilisers to achieve the targeted growth. The crops and varieties, alien to the soil, not only led to outbreaks of existing pests, but also attracted new pests and diseases. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of United Nations claims that we have lost 80 per cent of our agro-biodiversity. ‘In India we had more than a lakh paddy varieties in the 1960’s. Now hardly a few thousands remain, mostly in tribal areas’, observes a scientist-respondent.
Huge quantities of pesticides were used to combat this situation. Input of these ‘exotic’ elements into traditional farming led to a multitude of social and environmental issues (Narayanan, 2005). An agricultural and environmental scientist-cum-activist who leads an NGO in the capital city of Kerala has been very forthright:
Agriculture is now the single greatest source of human damage to the global environment. This damage takes a number of forms: erosion and salinization of soils; deforestation, as a strategy for bringing more land into cultivation, fertilizer runoff, which ultimately creates enormous “dead zones” around the mouths of many rivers; loss of biodiversity, fresh water scarcity, and agrochemical pollution of water and soil. In short, we created unprecedented abundance while ignoring the long-term consequences of our actions.
Kerala Turning Organic
Agriculture forms the main occupation of Keralites and it continues to be their main economic activity. Predominance of perennial tree crops, very small operational holdings (average size is 0.36 ha) and mainly rain-fed farming are the singular features of Kerala’s agriculture (Kannan & Pushpangadan, 1988). In fact, diverse agricultural systems evolved in Kerala, as diverse as its landscapes. But, prompted by the industrial and commoditised agricultural dictums, traditional agriculture was rejected in favour of the modern, intensive kind. This had a negative impact not only on agriculture but also on the economy, environment, culture and social life of people. Summarising the ill effects of Green Revolution, an agricultural scientist working in a central agricultural institute in Kerala testified thus:
Mono-cropping, mechanization, insecticides, chemical fertilizers, uncontrolled irrigation, all these together have adversely affected our environment. All these have reduced the productivity of the soil, its health. The organic carbon content in the soil is its life. Continuous usage of chemicals on the soil will reduce the organic carbon content of the soil. Unhindered use of these chemicals has resulted in atmospheric pollution, reduction of productivity of the soil and unsettled the biodiversity equilibrium etc. All these are the results of Green Revolution. As much as all these affected the atmosphere, it also affected the human beings and their health.
Industrial agriculture initiated by the canons of Green Revolution resulted in the commodification of Kerala’s agrarian environment and the intensification of chemical-based, cash-crop agriculture, which led to increasing farmer suicides and pesticide poisoning. The transformation of ‘agriculture’ to ‘agri-business’ has been most evident in Kerala (Thomas, 1999; Thottathil, 2012). The endosulfan tragedy in a way epitomises the devastating effects of industrial agriculture with its emphasis on the production of chemical-induced cash crops in Kerala. The ‘endosulfan tragedy’ in Kasargod district in Kerala revealed the most devastating effects of the use of pesticides on human life. Between 1976 and 2000, more than 50,000 villagers of Kasargod were exposed to endosulfan pesticide sprayed on the cashew plantations of Plantation Corporation of Kerala. Diseases such as mental retardation, cerebral palsy and cancer, which left several children mentally and physically handicapped and fatally ill, affected the villages. The tragedy evoked great public attention and debates, leading to the ban of endosulfan in the state in 2010. Later, a global ban on endosulfan was negotiated under the Stockholm Convention in April 2011. The state’s organic policy observed thus:
As many farmers in the State have realized that they are fighting a losing battle with the high yield variety - fertilizer-pesticide pack of Green Revolution. They have also realized that the degradation and disruption of the fragile ecosystems of the ‘God’s own country’ are the chief culprits for the water scarcity, nutritional insecurity, loss of primary productivity and agrarian crisis being faced by the State. The farmers in Kerala are convinced that the only way is to return to the traditional sustainable ways of cultivation without harming the ecosystem. (Government of Kerala, GoK, p. 3)
Further, economic liberalisation and WTO policies added to the woes of farmers by bringing down the prices of agriculture commodities in the country as a whole (Shiva, 2001; Vasavi, 1999). The WTO agreement on agriculture and the consequent liberalisation package in agricultural trade have resulted in a massive decline in the prices of agricultural products. The national policies of opening the retail sector to national and multinational companies posed a great threat to food sovereignty and right to safe food in the country. Worse still, in April 2001, with the removal of quantitative restrictions (QRs) on 714 items, most of the agricultural commodities of Kerala have been showing a steady decline in monthly market prices. Investment in agriculture has essentially changed from the farmer to the industries supplying input to the farmer, and, as a direct consequence, net income of farmers has decreased while the industries supporting agriculture in the country have flourished. This has adversely affected the livelihood of millions in the agricultural sector in Kerala.
Consequently, farmers in Kerala, particularly the homestead cultivators, were caught in the debt trap, owing to the bank loans taken to meet the high cost of farming, as it demanded more external inputs such as fertilisers, pesticides and water. Being hapless in the face of liquidation threats issued from banks due to farmers’ inability to repay their loans, many committed suicide. Kerala witnessed a high incidence of farmers’ suicides, to the extent of six suicides per month in 2003. Kerala had the third-highest suicide rate in India in 2006 (in 5 years 534 suicides in 2 districts alone), mostly small and marginal farmers who had less than 1 acre of land. Many of them embraced death by consuming the pesticide Furidan to escape indebtedness and agrarian stress (Patnaik, 2006). The case study that I conducted on this alarming rate of suicides among homestead farmers in the state has shed light on the likely connection between the agrarian crisis and the liberalisation policies of the federal state that shattered the agricultural economy of Kerala (Palackal, 2009). Even today the situation has not changed as Kerala continues to have suicides being reported, particularly from Wayanad, a major agricultural region in the state. Farmers had to face two major setbacks in agriculture during this period: first, the attack of fungal diseases, mainly on black pepper, which was one of major factors that led to debt and suicides in agricultural districts, and, second, sharp deterioration in the price of coffee. Kerala was the second-largest producer of coffee in India and due to the sudden decline of the price of coffee in the international markets, farmers were forced to cut down coffee bushes.
Commenting on the plight of small-scale farmers, an agricultural scientist-cum-activist was emphatic in her pronouncement on the way out from this modern malady that has engulfed the society in general and the farmers in particular, which echoed the vision and perspective of the neo-tribe of the organic community emerging in the state:
A solution lies in another direction altogether (…) in deliberately de-industrializing production but doing so intelligently, using information we have gained from the science of ecology as well as from traditional and indigenous farming methods in order to reduce environmental impacts while maintaining total yields at a level high enough to avert widespread famine? We must and can de-industrialize agriculture. This would imply a radical reduction of fossil-fuel inputs to agriculture accompanied by an increase in labour inputs and a reduction of transport, with production being devoted primarily to local consumption.
Global Organic Versus Domestic Organic
In the field of organic agriculture in India, one notices two parallel trends: (a) global organic production meant for the global market, hence export oriented, and (b) domestic organic production for the domestic market, hence subsistence oriented. Organic products from India—both multi-crops such as cereals, fruits and vegetables and so on and cash crops such as spices, tea, coffee and so on—have found big markets in the West, and thus turning organic farming is yet another agro-business and commercial enterprise by multinational corporates, companies and traders. European and American markets are filled with organic products from India and the farmers in India consider those markets as the most reliable to sell their organic products (Thottathil, 2012). Some estimates claim that approximately 9,000 farmers participated in certified organic agriculture programmes for export at the time of the announcement of the Organic Policy (ibid.). A rough estimation of around 85 per cent of the total organic production of the country heads for export markets (ibid.). Studies have shown that organic farming for export markets has made significant progress in many parts of India (Charyulu & Biswas, 2010; Das, 2007). Kerala has huge organic plantations of coffee, tea, cardamom and cashew in the private and public sectors, including the largest organic farm in Asia ( actually it is these small nominal farmers who feed 70% of our needs. Small-scale farming is still the most efficient. So there is no justification in avoiding small scale farming for the lack of efficiency. But we are keeping an inefficient burden on the small-scale farmer and that is the market –wasteful market’.
In fact, the domestic market for organic agriculture is underdeveloped in India in general and Kerala in particular (Das, 2007), although only a domestic organic market can address the impending issues of safe food and health. At the same time a salient feature of farming in Kerala is the homestead system of cultivation. The per capita availability of operational land in the state is small and declining rapidly (Ramachandran, 1996). According to the latest estimates of the Farm Information Bureau (2002), about 92 per cent of the operational holdings is less than 1 hectare. Only 0.06 per cent of the holdings are larger than 10 ha in size. The per capita operational holding size is estimated to be about 0.33 ha. The farm holdings are fragmented and subdivided due to high population density, rapid population growth and the laws of inheritance in force. This agricultural land pattern speaks of the survival significance of the income from homestead cultivation as far as the majority of the farmers in Kerala are concerned (Kannan & Pushpangadan, 1988), and the disastrous consequences of the liberalisation policies affected small-scale farmers more severely. The products of homestead cultivators often go to the domestic market, which pave the way for their subsistence. Unfortunately, the maladies of industrial agriculture are worst hit on homestead farmers who struggle hard to make both ends meet in and through agriculture. In this connection, the leader of ‘Organic Fair Trade Movement’ in the state made an illuminating observation:
In Kerala it was the home that is controlling homestead farming, not the market. Now the control of the kitchen or farming has been taken away from the women. This happened when kitchen got separated from the kitchen garden, control over the farming and market was lost (…) The homestead farming which was then controlled by women was then taken over by the market. Naturally cash crops replaced food crops.
In a way, unlike the agricultural capitalists who own plantations and estates, they are the ones who are pushed to the margins of the agricultural sector and hence remain at the periphery of the agrarian economy, to use Wallerstein’s notion (1974), in the contemporary post-capitalistic order of things. Notwithstanding, it is these marginal farmers who are active agents leading the ‘organic wave’ that is set in motion in the state.
Organic Agriculture and Development
While examining the developmental significance of the emerging shift towards organic agriculture in the state, it is necessary that we review various developmental discourses vis-à-vis the developmental discourse on organic agriculture. Conventional theories of development focus on state and multinational actors in shaping scientific and technological institutions, while institutional theories focus on the process of modelling. For instance, in the modernisation perspective, the Western industrialisation process is projected as the blueprint for the world at large. Modernisation is designed as ‘Western diffusion’, whereas the dependency theory proposes that the relationship between two or more countries assumes the form of dependence when some countries—the dominant ones—can expand and be self-starting, while others—dependent ones—can do this only as a reflection of that expansion. Here the relationship between dominant and dependent countries becomes unequal. It views dependency as an external condition resulting from colonial heritage and unequal international division of labour. Both these perspectives on development, in fact, operate on a bias—either endogenic or exogenic. Thus, modernisation theories seem to overemphasise internal conditions and its limitations—endogenism—and the dependency approach overemphasises external conditions—from domestic conditions to the international system of division of labour—exogenism. Both are basically founded on a capitalistic framework (Escobar, 1995; Harrison, 1989; Isbister, 2003). In the post-capitalistic era, characterised by the current wave of globalisation, development is perceived as a corporate project wherein multinational and transnational corporations emerged as the custodians of development, particularly in the less-developed parts of the globe. It theorises the development of a global economy in the sense that the world is moving in the direction of a more efficient use of resources and the means of production. Thus, development is perceived as a case of Western cultural and economic imperialism (Kiely & Marfleet, 1998).
As against these approaches to development which view development as basically an ‘externally imposed agenda’, the concept of re-agency is employed as a perspective in understanding the perceived developmental process in organic agriculture. The re-agency perspective (Shrum, 2005), by contrast, focuses on the initiatives and resource support from an agency that is either far away or regionally located in materialising the emerging developmental tasks in a given society. This view stands in stark contrast to the Western development paradigms, which have long promoted industrialisation and modernisation as solutions for poverty and social inequality in the developing world. The notion of re-agency views agency interactions as central to development and focuses on the process of efficiency built in the interactions and initiatives rather than targeting domestic or foreign aids/forces as culpable for the state of development.
The concept of ‘re-agency’ seems to better illuminate the conceptual and substantive efficacy of the new turn towards organic farming in the state. A reagent has the capacity to induce a reaction on the part of the actors involved and set in chains of events in order to bring about subsequent changes in an existing phenomenon. Similar to Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory that suggests interdependence between agency and structure, the concept of re-agency is distinct in that it considers multiple structures and agencies interacting within flows of time and over multiple spaces. In the case of the recent shift towards organic agriculture in the state, re-agency appears to be a regionalised affair in that the state is emerging as the focal ‘reagent’, stimulating radical changes in the agricultural sector. This understanding of re-agency builds on three dimensions of agency: (a) it is a structurally embedded social engagement, (b) it unfolds within the flow of time and (c) it unfolds with any given action, exhibiting orientation to its past, present and future components. Hence, re-agency as a conceptual framework accounts for the temporal orientations of actors possessing distinct identities and is situated in specific structural contexts.
Organic Agriculture: A Countermovement
Organic agriculture as a reagent of the developmental matrix of the state has been on the move, developing its own discursive fields, filled with dynamic tension, opposition and resilience in the wake of the agrarian crisis. Karl Polanyi, the political economist who critiqued the effects of free markets on society and the environment, in Great Transformation (1944), describes how the commodification of the three fictitious commodities (land, labour and money) led to devastation in industrialising England, ranging from ‘the denudation of forests’ to ‘the deterioration of craft standards [and] the disruption of folkways’ (p. 139). According to Polanyi, advocates of the free market persisted on subordinating each under the logic of the market, providing them with corresponding ‘exchange values’ (Burawoy, 2003). Polanyi’s (1944) analysis of the ‘countermovement’ as the society’s protective response to the commodification of land (nature/environment), labour and money is a critique of the destructiveness of market liberalism, the ideology undergirding capitalist development. Polanyi goes on to explain that the countermovement emerged in England to protect land, labour and money from annihilation and restrict and regulate the free market.
Similarly, many people, organisations, and institutions came together to create Kerala’s countermovement in agriculture in direct response to the market destruction of Kerala’s agrarian environment. It is significant to note that the environmentally destructive outcomes in a liberalised agrarian market economy propelled the Biodiversity Board, the chief architect of the organic policy and the LDF government with an explicit political ecological ideology into creating an organic agricultural policy that spearheaded the countermovement. Hence, the state policy is one key component of this countermovement that fosters greater civic engagement of organic farmers and like-minded stakeholders in re-embedding market-driven agriculture. Gramsci, Hoare, and Nowell-Smith (1971) has conceived civil society as a realm of social organisation, in which different actors organise to fight for and promote their needs and wants. Kerala’s Organic Farming Policy is now encouraging greater self-sufficiency of individual producers and communities, especially in input-making, procurement and food production. The policy endorses flexible and local-level decision-making about organic methods and practices. Hence, the countermovement, it appears, is capable of facilitating the openings for further transformations in Kerala’s agrarian relations, economy, politics and ecology. Hailing it as a ‘re-ruralisation programme’ that can strengthen democracy, one of the organic activists-cum-scientists visualised this organic drive thus:
The re-ruralization program could be a springboard for the rebirth of democracy. Recent sociological research reveals that people who have the ability to influence policy in their communities demonstrate a much higher sense of satisfaction with life in general. If we do this well, it could mean the revitalization not only of democracy but of the family and of authentic, locally-based culture. A new alliance among environmental organizations, farmers, gardeners, organizations promoting economic justice, the anti-globalization movement, universities and colleges, local businesses, churches, and other social organizations.
The division between ‘homestead farming and export farming’ represents the border conflict of the counter-organic movement from below. The division between ‘food crops versus cash crops’ reflects this broader conflict, revealing the ideological dynamics of cultural politics of the state as a bio-diverse hotspot. This ideological difference was evidenced in the tension which brewed up at the time of the making of the policy between the Biodiversity Board that remained at the side of the marginal farmers and environmental degradation in decreeing an aggressive policy on organic agriculture and the Department of Agriculture which was more in favour of retaining the status quo with the prevailing capitalistic mode of agricultural practices in the state. Thus, one finds that Kerala’s 2010 Organic Farming Policy has roots not only in Kerala’s agrarian crisis but its historical class and civil society politics as well (Government of Kerala, 2010). A noted environmentalist and agricultural activist thus remarked: ‘What is special about all this is that when elsewhere government agencies, agricultural researchers or NGOs started organic farming, in Kerala it was the people’s movements who supported organic farming’. For instance, a social activist heading an NGO working in the fields of alternate agriculture, food security and health has this testimonial:
In Kalliyoor Grama Panchayat, there was a Biodiversity Management Council (BMC) functioning under the legal backing and support of the State Biodiversity Board and National Biodiversity Authority. It was in Kalliyoor Grama Panchayat that for the first time in Kerala a Bhakshya Arogya Swaraj initiative came into being. We made a slogan, ‘All those who eat food need to be part of food production.
Therefore, it was Kerala’s political institutions built on the ideology of people’s plan, and principals of decentralisation and participation served as the bedrock from which this countermovement could emerge.
Conclusion
Organic farmers who are at the periphery of a market-driven agrarian economy in Kerala seem to form themselves as a neo-tribe, forging a collective identity signalling alternative life styles and practices and marketing. Melucci (1996) describes collective identity in terms of a process produced through collective action having relational reciprocity between actors and the discursive field. The discursive field, in turn, links knowledge, beliefs, values and practices of the actors and stakeholders of a movement, which together constitutes a ‘discourse’ in the Foucauldian sense (Foucault, 1972). When an alternative set of knowledge, beliefs, values and practices of a particular movement counter an existing, dominant discourse—that is, the industrial and mechanised farming system—movements tend to construct and deconstruct discourses simultaneously. The NGOs, researchers, academicians, activists, organic customers and all other supportive agents in their turn extend solidarity and unity with this neo-tribe, advocating and strengthening the cause of the countermovement. Resultantly, this movement chain gives rise to new discursive practices and develops alternate socio-cultural networks, heralding social change and development.
The development of a counter-discourse, therefore, opens up the possibilities of a paradigm shift, as Kuhn explained in his Structure of Scientific Revolution (1962), which heralds social transformation and development. Kuhn argued for an episodic model in scientific development in which periods of conceptual continuity in normal science were interrupted by periods of revolutionary science. During revolutions in science, the discovery of anomalies leads to a whole new paradigm that changes the rules of the game directing new practices, systems and structures. The evidence from Kerala demonstrates that organic agriculture can offer meaningful opportunities for transforming the agricultural system and agricultural governance in local places. Therefore, organic agriculture as a countermovement is likely to signal a counter-discourse in terms of ideology, policy, politics and a way of life to the dominant market-driven agriculture in the state.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.