Author: Savitri Choudhury
Publication: Outlook
Date: November 22, 2004
URL: http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20041122&fname=Villages+%28F%29&sid=1
Introduction: A village shows the
way to tackle pests with indigenous, non-chemical means
Punukula was just another sleepy
village in Andhra Pradesh's Khammam district till word spread about a quiet
revolution taking place there. Now farmers from across the state are trooping
in to see for themselves: is what they have heard true? Can cotton really
be grown without spraying chemical pesticides? The farmers of Punukula
have many success stories to narrate but are getting tired of all the attention.
"By the time the morning batch is ready to leave, the evening lot of visitors
is already arriving," says Hemlanayak, grumbling about the sudden flood
of people to his village.
Last month, Punukula's 12-member
panchayat passed a resolution banning sale or use of chemical pesticides
in the village. The news has naturally come as a radical shift in a state
which has the dubious distinction of having the highest consumption of
pesticide in the country. However, the Punukula panchayat's resolution
was not some arbitrary decision but the result of a planned programme.
It was a decision which had the support of all the farmers in the village.
It was in 1998 that members of a
local NGO, working on a watershed management programme in the area, began
advising villagers to stop spraying their fields with chemical pesticides.
They asked them to go back to the age-old method of using indigenous, biodynamic
sprays and pastes to control pests. However, nobody was convinced as most
farmers in Andhra Pradesh, as in the rest of the country, firmly believe
it's impossible to cultivate crops-especially cotton, the dominant crop
in Punukula-without pesticides.
Today, 60-year-old Margam Mutthaiah
is proud to declare that Punukula's war on pesticides began with him. In
the summer of 2001, saddled with debts crossing well over a lakh, Mutthaiah
felt he had nothing left to lose and so decided to give it a shot. "People
thought I was crazy and even I myself wasn't fully convinced. Despite repeatedly
spraying such deadly and expensive chemicals, we still had pest problems
and here they were telling us to fight them with ordinary things such as
neem and garlic sprays. It just didn't seem to make sense," says Mutthaiah
who grows cotton, red gram, chilli and paddy on 20 acres of land.
However, much to his surprise and
of all the rest in Punukula, the traditional methods not only worked, but
also made sound economic sense. Pesticide costs ranged anywhere between
Rs 8,000 and Rs 12,000 per acre of crop. And they kept escalating as the
pests built up resistance to a particular pesticide. The farmers were then
forced to resort to the next generation of deadlier chemical cocktails,
which invariably pushed up costs, many times by 100 per cent. On the other
hand, with traditional methods of pest control, costs dropped to just a
couple of hundred rupees per acre while the yields remained just as good,
if not better.
"In three years since I've stopped
pesticides, I've cleared all my debts, married off a daughter and saved
Rs 60,000," says Mutthaiah. Pesticides account for almost 60 per cent of
the input costs in cotton. Studies show that while cotton accounts for
only 5 per cent of India's crop cover, it consumes over 50 per cent of
the pesticides used in the country.
Impressed by Mutthaiah's success,
other farmers in the village began following his example. In several cases,
it was the women who forced change on obstinate husbands. Veerabhadra is
grateful that his wife put her foot down. Says he, "Instead of mounting
debts, we are now making a profit on every acre we cultivate. Now, we have
taken on an additional five acres on lease." A five-fold escalation of
land rentals in Punukula and adjoining villages in the last three years
is a reflection of the recent increased viability of agriculture in the
region.
Besides creating their own pastes
and sprays with neem seeds, chilli, garlic and cow-dung, farmers have also
learned to encourage the return of natural predators such as ants, birds
and wasps that feed on the bollworm larvae infesting cotton crops. Now,
there's a more integrated pest-management approach that takes into account
the entire life-cycle of the insect instead of only trying to bombard it
with deadly toxins.
Meanwhile, inspired by their own
turnaround, the farmers of Punukula are spreading the story of their success
to other farmers. In addition to advising those who visit Punukula, the
villagers have also formed an advocacy group that sends members to a different
village every week. This farmer-to-farmer contact is paying off. The neighbouring
village of Pullaigudem has also become totally pesticide-free while several
other villages in the area have also drastically cut back on chemical use.
"In 2001, I sold pesticides worth
Rs 40 lakh a year. Now, it's down to Rs 25 lakh even though the cost of
the pesticides has actually gone up," says Srinivas Rao, owner of Mansa
Fertilisers and Pesticides, one of the largest pesticide suppliers in Palvoncha,
the local mandal headquarters. Rao candidly admits the Punukula experiment
is a success. However, alarmed by the drop in business, he sits with two
bundles of cotton, one looking obviously healthier than the other, trying
to convince customers that using pesticides means better yields.
Pesticide dealers are known for
their aggressive marketing tactics, including misinformation to force farmers
to buy more of their products. "Over the years, they have completely eroded
the farmer's confidence in traditional methods of farming, making them
totally reliant on commercial inputs," says K. Venumadhav, secretary of
secure (Socio-Economic and Cultural Upliftment in Rural Environment)-the
NGO that first persuaded Punukula to dump pesticides. In most cases, these
dealers are also moneylenders and often the farmers, caught in the debt
trap, are forced to sell their produce to them below the market price.
Over the years, several villages
have experimented with the idea of saying no to pesticides. But Punukula's
success is unique because of the commitment of the entire village. The
social homogeneity of the village-tribals, Dalits and other backward castes-meant
there were no caste rivalries to weaken the anti-pesticide movement. According
to activists, there is no reason why the Punukula model cannot be implemented
in other villages. However, given the powerful market forces at play and
the fact that most agriculture scientists themselves lack confidence in
traditional methods of cultivation, Punukula is swimming against the tide.
