“Do nothing agriculture”

Japanese natural farming pioneer Masanobu Fukuoka talks of the ideal of 'do nothing' agriculture. For him this is a spiritual principle, the Zen 'mu', as much as a practical guideline for the practice of sustainable agriculture. No chemical inputs, no genetic manipulation, no machines and no cultivation. In his small farm in Shikoku he consistently achieved better yields with higher biodiversity and less effort than the neighbouring fields with their intensive practice of modern agriculture. A major part of his field was devoted to orchards, wildly growing vegetables and free range poultry. The rest was planted with rice, clover and winter grain in a rotation with the chaff roughly strewn around after harvest as mulch. In India some farmers have seen in Fukuoka's precepts a reflection of the ancient 'rishi'or 'seer' agriculture which the forest seers of ancient India practiced.

 

Last month Ram and I headed out to Village Lohgarh, 30 kms from Ludhiana, Punjab's richest city. This is where the green revolution 'succeeded' beyond anyone's dreams. As we drive up we see lush green wheat fields and prosperous looking houses with cars and tractors sharing the yard space with healthy looking buffaloes. We head to the ancestral home of Tejinder Khatra. Tejinder, Teji to his friends, lives in Austria. His nephew Resham manages his 10.5 acre farm and his own dairy operation of nine buffaloes. Teji wants us to help convert his farm to organic, integrated agriculture. But first we have some convincing and rapport building to do. We soon strike a conversation with Resham about the economics of agriculture in the area.

 

If you rent out your land to another farmer as Teji has done, you earn Rupees 25,000 to 30,000 or approximately $ 600 an acre. If you farm yourself you can probably make Rs 15,000 on top of that i.e. Rs 40,000-Rs 45,000 per acre. This appears to be a sub-optimal 'wage' for the farmer who brings his labour and management skills to the equation but there are other benefits including food security at home and the ability to borrow from the grain market (The farmer's bankability depends on his ability to bring a certain amount of produce to the trader who is also often his main lender). Acoording to the law of demand and supply this seems to work.

 

The Punjab farmer is locked into an intense paddy-wheat rotation. As a rule of thumb the wheat pays off all your input costs while the paddy is your net return. Resham squeezes 2.8 to 3 tons of rice per acre which fetches him around Rs 25,000 while the wheat yield is around 1.8 tons or Rs 18,000 per acre. He plants 7-8 acres every year with paddy and wheat, an acre or so with green fodder and a small patch or two with some vegetables. His input costs – labour brought in from outside, seeds, fertilizers, herbicides, diesel and electricity – are around Rs 7000 per acre for paddy and Rs 5000 per acre for wheat. Thus, his net income from paddy and wheat is Rs 30,000 per acre. The chaff for his dairy operation, around 2.4 tons per acre or a total of nearly 17 tons for the 7 acres he planted is 'free'. We cost this at around Rs 4000 a ton. Thus to our mind his net real income from produce is close to Rs 40,000 per acre or Rs 320,000 per year.

 

Resham's dairy operation fetches him Rupees 900 a day or Rs 27,000 a month. His costs are close to Rs 12,000, of which feed (fortified unfortunately with Urea) alone is Rs 7500. Chaff and green fodder is 'free' in this integrated operation (we have already costed his chaff). His yearly income from dairy is thus around Rs 180,000. This gives a real total income of Rupees 500,000 per year or roughly Rs 50,000 per acre. This puts Resham's annual income at $ 11,000, an excellent place to be if you are an Indian farmer.

 

Is this the bench mark we are up against? No, the challenge is tougher. The latest fad in Punjab is to rent out your land to brick kiln operators who come home and hand you Rupees 75,000-100,000 per acre for two years. They scoop off the top three feet of soil, make bricks on site and sell them for a hefty profit to the ravenous construction market in Ludhiana. Why bother with planting, weeding and harvesting when you can sit at home and make nearly as much? When the brick makers hand the land back to you, you start all over again with bags of urea and packets of herbicide to help you make up for lost time. The Punjab country side is now increasingly dotted with ugly patches of scooped out land.

 

My heart sinks as I take in the consequences of this variety of 'do nothing' agriculture. It also strikes me that our challenge in 'selling' sustainable agriculture to farmers is not only the revenue comparison but also the 'effort' balance sheet. Fukuoka's bet was that natural farming could not only yield more but could also be more economical of effort. The seduction of modern intensive chemical agriculture is not only higher yields and returns but also leisure and freedom from drudgery. This has to be met with a more compelling message. A decent revenue comparison helps; a clear exposition of external costs helps too but eventually farming is about farmers. Therefore the heart of the message – the counter-ideology - has to be allure of entrepreneurship, of regaining ownership of agriculture.

 

Amandeep, Farmers First Foundation