Art, science and commerce of Brinjal

By Sudhirendar Sharma
08 Mar 2010

If a large section of mainstream media is to be believed India may soon witness mass hunger, demoralised scientists and economic recession if Bt brinjal is not allowed to be commercially cultivated.

Childhood memories of brinjal, popularly called baingun, are curiously uniform across the country. As kids, no one seemingly had any fascination for the violet vegetable. From elongated to round and from small to big, brinjal diversity has always been on offer without many takers to savour its predictable recipes. At school, brinjal helped children remember 'violet' being a conspicuous colour of the rainbow. Rarely would the relationship with brinjal extend any further.

That the lowly vegetable would gain national significance and the hyperactive environment minister adding a 'brinjal' on his cap could be the gravest surprise ever. That some of the 2,400 varieties of brinjal that middle class mothers selected from the vegetable vendors would be under pest threat unless impregnated with an alien gene could be no less amusing.

This would have made my grandmother happy who, as a staunch vegetarian, had an eerie feeling about some legless worm roaming freely within the encased flesh of brinjal. Pest control in brinjal had meant liberal sprinkling of woodstove ash to ward off the devouring pest from its broad leaves. Since no one ever heard of a pest epidemic on brinjal, the indigenous method had seemingly worked to keep the market price of brinjal under check.

But this has seemingly not gone well with those who consider that Olericulture, the science of growing vegetables, be given a lesson. After all, science has to progress even if the poor brinjal has to be its unsuspecting guinea pig. And, why should it matter that an annual 8 million tonnes of brinjal production in the country is not under any crisis? The bedtime story of a tiger devouring a lamb for the crime that it never committed seems real for once!

Could the lowly brinjal cloud the scientific vision of the country? It seems it already has if the thwarted exasperation of the science & technology minister is anything to go by. The minister argued that the scientists would be demoralised should the progress on Bt brinjal is put on hold for long. One would expect the scientific community to contest such irresponsible utterance because brinjal isn't the only topic of research they have been engaged in!

The minister, Prithvi Raj Chavan, reminds me of my history lessons. While his namesake stood for bravery, courage, principles and patriotism, the modern-day Prithvi Raj is behaving more like Jaichand. History has been known to repeat itself and it seems to be doing so again after 820 years. But that it will repeat with characters switching sides has been beyond imagination. Brinjal is sure to rewrite history!

A bit of history has already been written. Unassuming brinjal has triggered a new wave of nationalism, with people rallying around the most unlikely of symbol to assert patriotism. For once, brinjal is at the centre stage of discourse to challenge colonialism of the kind that takes genetic route to control peoples' lives. If nothing else, it has helped identify the enemy within.

Brinjal has clearly become a big hurdle on way to a $1 billion a year seed industry, with any number of paid employees of the biotech industry and those willing to accept any kind of 'sponsorship' vouching for its safety. The same biotech industry that had thumped safety related aspects of Bt cotton now secretly accepts that not only have cattle died after consuming Bt cotton residues but skin allergies to farmers have been on the rise too. By its own admission, the pest resistant vigour of Bt cotton has been on the decline.

Without doubt, the claims on Bt brinjal are not above suspicion. Science ought to be held accountable, as no one can afford slow genetic transformation on account of consuming genetically modified vegetables. A recent report indicating conversion of male rats into females through exposure to widely used weed killer atrazine has sent alarm bells ringing. A genetically modified food product could indeed be doubly potent. One would only argue that the proponents of Bt brinjal are well within their means to push science and to make profit but not at the cost of making bhartha of our lives.

A farm model to sustain the world

By Devinder Sharma
07 Jan 2010

Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA) model successfully implemented in Andhra Pradesh is a roadmap for the future of Indian and world agriculture. It has tremendous potential to remove poverty and hunger with a very low carbon footprint.

As we enter 2010, the script for a futuristic agriculture which brings back the smile on the face of the Indian farmer, without leaving any scar on the environment, is being rewritten.

What began as a small initiative some six years back in a non-descript village in Khamam district, has now spread to over 20 lakh acres in 18 districts of Andhra Pradesh. I remember when I first talked about the miracle brought about in village Pannukula in Andhra Pradesh, many thought I was simply trying to romanticise agriculture. How farming can be done without the use of chemical pesticides, I was repeatedly asked.

Pannukula dug out a lonely furrow, but eventually blazed a trail. In the next four years, more than 318,000 farmers in 18 out of the 23 districts of Andhra Pradesh have discarded the intensive chemical farming systems, and shifted to a more sustainable, economically viable and ecologically friendly agriculture. A silent revolution is in the offing. In Kharif 2009, some 14 lakh acres was covered with what is now known as Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA).

As I write this in the first week of January 2010, the area had expanded to 20 lakh acres of 21 districts. Six lakh acres increase in a farming system that does not use chemical pesticides, and is also phasing out chemical fertiliser, that too in matter of few months, is a record of sorts. And all this has happened without any push from the government agencies and the private sector. I see no reason why this environmentally safe, and a farmer-friendly system of sustainable agriculture, cannot cover 200 million acres across the country in another ten years or so if the government gets serious.

Ten years from now, in 2020, when we try to look back, Indian agriculture can be transformed into a healthy and vibrant system where farmer suicides have been relegated to history, where distress and despondency has been replaced by the lost pride in farming, and where agriculture becomes sustainable in the long run and does not result in climate change.

What began as an experiment to evolve a farming system without the application of chemical pesticides is now also phasing out the use of chemical fertilisers. It uses a mixture of scientific proven technologies, indigenous knowledge and traditional wisdom. Farmers are replacing chemical fertilisers and pesticides with microbial formulations, intensive use of composting techniques, vermi-composting, and apply bio-fertilisers, and use bio-extracts for controlling pests.

It therefore brought in a complete shift from conventional agriculture and offered secure and stable livelihoods. The crop yields have remained the same, the pest attack has drastically reduced, and the soil is returning back to its natural fertility levels. As soil fertility improves over the years, crop yields have started going up still further. More importantly, farmer's expenditure on health problems emanating from pesticides application has also gone down by 40 per cent on an average.

There is more money now in the hands of the farmers. The cost of cultivation per acre has also come down by 33 per cent. Take the case of cotton, a CMSA farmer saves more than Rs 12,500 per hectare in a year on account of no application of pesticides alone. With his crop productivity remaining stable, cotton farmers have got a new lease of life. The environment too has become healthier and safe.

Normally, 56 per cent of the cost of cotton cultivation is primarily on account of pesticides. And don't forget, elsewhere in the State and for that matter in the country, 70 per cent of the farmers who are committing suicide are engaged in cotton cultivation.

No farmer has committed suicide in the areas where non-pesticides management system of farming is being followed.

More money in the hands of farmers means less debt. I haven't seen any other village in the country in past three decades of my work in agriculture, which has been able to recover its entire mortgaged land from the money lenders in just three years of adopting non-pesticides management. This happened in village Ramachandrapuram in Khamam district where all 75 farmers have even paid back the outstanding rate of interest.

Studies in five districts show that out of the 467 families that had mortgaged their land, at least 386 have recovered it in two years time.

This is a roadmap for the future of Indian agriculture. It not only provides a sustainable path, with a very low carbon footprint, and has tremendous potential to remove poverty and hunger. It has been conclusively demonstrated that household food security has improved with a 40 per cent drop in the purchase of food from the market. The crop yields have gone up, and farmers are now able to cultivate two crops in a year. This is the Zero Hunger model that needs to be adopted under the proposed National Food Security Act.

Savings have increased, and a federation of 850,675 self-help groups now involves 10 million women from the poor households. This federation now holds a corpus of US $ 1.5 billion providing a bundle of economic services. No wonder, sustainable agriculture without external inputs can revolutionise the rural landscape, where hunger and poverty becomes history. #

Obituary to Dr Norman Borlaug: He wouldn’t accept agriculture without chemicals

By Devinder Sharma
18 Sep 2009

The simple scientist, credited with the Green Revolution, was a die hard supporter of using chemicals and pesticides to increase food production.


It was discovery of a stocky Japanese wheat variety Norin-10 that the US military advisor, Dr D C Salmon, sent back home in the early 1960's that changed the face of global agriculture. This was the variety, the only known semi-dwarf traditional wheat strain, that Dr Norman Borlaug was keenly looking for. Crossed with the rust-resistant varieties that Borlaug had developed at the International Centre for Wheat and Maize Research (CIMMYT) in Mexico, the world got the miracle improved varieties that made history.

These semi-dwarf plants developed by Dr Borlaug responded to the application of chemical fertilisers and produced a bountiful grain harvest. The yields multiplied under favourable conditions, and Borlaug knew that the best place to apply the new technology was obviously India, with the largest population of hungry and starved in the world. "I tried my best to convince the Indian politicians about the utility of these semi-dwarf varieties in fighting hunger, but they were not interested," he had once told me. Although the agricultural scientists, by and large, were convinced about the yield potential of these varieties, the politicians were not.

"When I didn't see much headway being made, I played the political card knowing the political rivalry between Indian and Pakistan," he went on to explain. "I told India that if you don't want these varieties, I will give them instead to Pakistan." I am not sure whether it was because of the political astuteness of Dr Borlaug or the domestic necessity, India imported 18,000 tonnes of wheat seed of the semi-dwarf varieties in 1966. Within a few weeks of the import, the seed was made available in 5 kg packs and distributed widely in the areas where irrigation was abundant.

The rest is history. India emerged out of 'ship-to-mouth' existence. Although hunger prevails, famine certainly has become history.

For several years after the Green Revolution was launched, I had the pleasure of accompanying him on his annual visits to the Punjab Agricultural University in Ludhiana. As a young journalist I was always in awe of Dr Borlaug, and found him to be a simple and dedicated scientist. He would spend hours in scorching sun in the wheat research fields and was always keen to visit farmers. At one such evening at a farmer's house, I remember the host saying: "The three major inputs for raising wheat yields are: farmers, improved seed and Borlaug."

Walking along the sprawling wheat fields in Ludhiana, I asked him once: "What is your biggest achievement. I mean what you would like to be remembered for." I thought he would say that he wanted to be recalled for his contribution to plant sciences and fighting global hunger. But in all humility, Dr Borlaug replied: "I want to be remembered as someone who introduced baseball in Mexico." And when I burst out laughing, Dr Borlaug gave me a detailed account of how he actually spent hours playing and promoting baseball.

Green Revolution subsequently spread to parts of Asia and Latin America. It did enable a number of developing countries to emerge out of the hunger trap. Agricultural scientists globally promoted the technology - cultivating the water guzzling high-yielding varieties of wheat (the same technology was subsequently applied in rice) application of chemical fertilisers, and pesticides - and were never able to understand why the environmentalists were opposed to the technology.


Such was the blind faith in the technology that Borlaug developed and promoted that agricultural scientists refused to see the flip side which was clearly evident through the deterioration of the plant ecology and the destruction to the environment. Several years after Rachel Carlson published her historic work The Silent Spring I asked Borlaug whether he had read the book: "She is an evil force," he reacted angrily, adding: "These are the people who do not want to eradicate hunger." I didn't agree with him, and asked him why agricultural scientists can't accept that chemical pesticides simply kill. "You too, Sharma," he quipped, and then replied: "Remember, pesticides are like medicines. They have to be applied carefully and safely."

Dr Borlaug remained steadfast all through on the role of chemical fertiliser and pesticides. He was so adamant that when the Third World Academy in Italy presented a paper on how Brazil had achieved remarkable crop yields in soybean and sugarcane without applying chemical nitrogen, he didn't agree. It was only after he travelled to Brazil and saw for himself the crop yields that he at least acknowledged the reality. But even then, he wouldn't accept agriculture without chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Such was his blind faith in plant breeding that initially he even rejected biotechnology, saying it was a 'waste of time." However, later in life, he became a supporter of Genetic Engineering.

He would often tell me that if India had not followed the Green Revolution technology, the country would have required bringing an additional 58 million hectares under cultivation to produce the same quantity of food that was being produced after the high-yielding varieties of wheat were introduced. My argument to this was that although the country saved 58 million hectares but 40 years after Green Revolution, more than double -- close to 120 million hectares -- are faced with varying degrees of degradation. Borlaug never pardoned me for espousing the cause of long-term sustainability in agriculture. He never accepted that the world could produce enough food with Low-external Input Sustainable Agriculture (LEISA) techniques. In fact, knowingly or unknowingly he did espouse the cause of corporate control of agriculture.

Although Green Revolution did bypass small farmers, Borlaug knew and appreciated the role farmers played in producing food. Perhaps the world does not know that it was for the sake of farmers that he had even decried a Nobel prize for Poland's popular leader Lech Walesa. At a time when Lech Walesa had emerged as the leader of the Solidarity Movement in Poland, the Nobel Prize committee constituted a small team to go and find out whether Walesa deserved a prize.

The team was headed by Dr Borlaug.

Upon return, he told me that how appalled he was to learn that all that Walesa was talking about was cheaper food for the industrial workers. He was not bothered nor did he care to know as to what would happen to the livelihoods of millions of farmers who were producing food for the industrial workers. "My report had therefore categorically ruled out a Nobel for Walesa." It is however another matter that Walesa did receive a Nobel Peace prize.

"Be warned, Sharma," he told me during one of his visit to Pantnagar University, "when people stop talking about farmers, when people fail to recognise their role in feeding the country, be sure there is something terribly wrong happening in agriculture." These prophetic words hold true today. In India, it no longer hurts when farmers commit suicide or quit agriculture. For quite some time, farmers have disappeared from the economic radar screen of the country. This is a clear pointer to the terrible agrarian crisis that prevails.

Subsidize traditional varieties, not hybrid seeds

By Devinder Sharma
16 Sep 2009

By providing heavy subsidies for hybrid vegetable seeds, the government is promoting chemical and pesticide intensive agriculture. Instead, subsidy should be extended to healthier traditional crop varieties.

If you are wondering why your vegetables are tasteless and are devoid of nutrients, the answer is simple. The traditional varieties of vegetables, which were not only a reflection of the genetic diversity, but were also nutritionally rich and pleasing to the taste buds, have been increasingly replaced with hybrid varieties. These hybrid varieties are uniform in shape, require more chemical fertilisers and pesticides and drain out more ground water. But since they yield high, farmers are willing to pay a higher price. And if not, the government steps in by providing subsidy for the purchase of hybrid seeds.

No wonder, the traditional vegetable varieties have almost disappeared. If you go to the market and enquire about vegetable seeds, the chances are that you will get only hybrid seeds.

All these hybrid varieties require heavy doses of chemical pesticides. The bhindi (Okra) you get in New Delhi, for instance, is cultivated in the outskirts of the National Capital Region. If you happen to visit a bhindi patch, you will be shocked to find that as many as 15 to 20 chemical sprays are quite normal. The other day I found that even while the sky was overcast and rain was expected, workers were busy spraying pesticides on the standing bhindi crop. I tried to convince them that rain would wash away the pesticide, but they were not willing to change the practice followed widely in spite of my advice.

Sometimes back I was travelling in Uttarakhand, which prides itself as an organic state. Even there I saw farm labour, mostly migrants from Nepal, spraying pesticides approximately 24 to 28 times on tomatoes, which are the sold in New Delhi. This is not an exception. Much of the vegetables we buy in New Delhi for example are heavily sprayed with pesticides, in fact, drenched in chemical pesticides. Now don't think that this malaise only afflicts the Delhi NCR region. All metros, big cities and towns are faced with a similar problem.

Last week I travelled to Meerut to address a conference on organic farming. It was heartening to listen to several organic farmers and NGOs associated with them. I was informed that the UP State Horticulture Department was providing 50 per cent subsidy on the cultivation of expensive hybrid seeds of vegetables. This subsidy is being provided under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna launched by the Central government last year.

Subsidy is available for raising nurseries of only hybrid seeds of Shimla Mirch, Tomato, Capsicum, Onion, Lauki, Karela (bitter gourd), Cucumber and Tori. Subsidy is coming for a complete package of growing the hybrid seeds in a nursery, before it is transplanted. The subsidy amount will not exceed 50 per cent of the total expenses. To illustrate, let us take hybrid tomato. Under the scheme, a farmer will be subsidised to a maximum limit of 50 per cent of the total expenditure, and not exceeding Rs 47,500 per hectare. The government brochure lists the names of the hybrid tomato varieties -- Samridhi, ArkaAnayaya, Pusa hybrid-2, Pusa Rubi Avinash-2 -- that a farmer can pick from. About 150-200 grams of hybrid seed is required per hectare. The total seed cost for 0.2 hectares is worked out at Rs 1680, and the entire cost is being subsidised by the government.

The rest of the subsidy is for the other nursery activities for raising these plants

When the entire seed cost of hybrid seeds is subsidised by the government, farmers surely have an attraction to go for the cultivation of hybrid seeds of vegetables even if they know that these are more damaging for the environment and human health. And then we are told that since the farmers are adopting these varieties in such a large number, these must be good. After all, farmer is the best judge. But what we are not told is that the cultivation of these hybrid seeds is picking up not because of farmers preference but because of the subsidy being doled out.

Remove the subsidy on hybrid seeds, and I am sure many farmers would continue to grow the traditional or the open-pollinated varieties. At the same time, there is an urgent need to provide subsidy for the cultivation of traditional seeds of vegetables. NGOs and farmer organisations should demand an equivalent subsidy for open-pollinated varieties, keeping the nutritional security of the nation in mind. Like the hybrid seeds, I think the entire cost of the seeds of traditional varieties of vegetables should also be subsidised.

Meanwhile, the government has announced a subsidy of Rs 288-crore for cheaper seeds for ensuing rabi or winter-season crops. The seed industry is obviously excited. I wonder why this subsidy cannot be also channelised for the promotion of traditional crop varieties in the rabi season?