ISTR Sixth International Conference Toronto, Canada / July 11-14, 2004 Contesting Citizenship and Civil Society in a Divided World

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	Abstracts

Non-governmental Organizations and Sustainable Agriculture Development in India
by
S Rajendran
Reader in Economics, University of Mysore, Mysore, India 570 006

Key words: NGOs, high external input agriculture, low external input agriculture, sustainable agriculture.

During early days of human civilization, agriculture was subsistence and sustainable (SA) without external inputs and subsequently, strides in science and technology has taken agriculture as more commercial and consequently unsustainable. Large scale external inputs was used to grow more food grains to meet the increasing population and land being inelastic resource, it was needed to increase the productivity from a given parcel of land termed as High External Input Agriculture (HEIA). Such development took place more in industrialized countries and they had trade advantages and slowly, developing countries also followed the suit albeit the potential has not been taped fully. However, across the world the agriculture is becoming more commercial and external inputs are extensively used with intensive cultivation practices. On the part of the state many supportive programs (including direct and indirect subsidies) were launched to protect agriculture especially in developed countries. Consequently modern and commercial agriculture system emerged and evaluation studies show that agriculture under this system has negative implications like uneconomical, class disparity, environmental degradation and technically not feasible and in the long run unsustainable (Reijnjes et al 1992). Also local knowledge system developed and practiced over generations, have replaced by laboratory made agricultural packages. Alternative to HEIA, states, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) across the world are attempting to develop a framework – Low External Inputs and Sustainable Agriculture (LEISA) – for promoting sustainable agriculture development (SAD). In fact according to studies, NGOs are preferred than state owned machineries as the former provided effective and equitable services to the community (Muttalib, 1987 and Brett, 1993).

Though the concept ‘sustainability’ has larger connotation, in agriculture it refers to the capacity to remain productive while maintaining the resource base. The Technical Advisory Committee of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (TAC/CGIR, 1988) notes “sustainable agriculture is the successful management of resources for agriculture to satisfy changing human needs while maintaining or enhancing the quality of the environment and conserving natural resources.” NGOs as third sector institutional framework play a crucial role in providing strong support to the developmental issues (Aurora et al, 1994 and Rajendran, 2003) especially where the government and private sectors show less interest and for the present exercise it is confined to discuss with regard to SAD. Indeed many of the states across the globe provide strong support for modern agriculture, but mainly to increase the production without considering the environment sustainability (Pingali, 2001). If this issue is not addressed, it would lead to depletion of natural resources, besides collapsing the rural economy at large and hence in this paper an attempt is made to examine the role of NGOs in promoting SAD with two fold objectives. Firstly, to analyze the role of NGOs in convincing in the form of training the local farmers to adapt SAD and secondly to explain the success of promoting SAD.

Data Source:

For this purpose, a few NGOs have been selected randomly for detailed investigation and relevant information was collected by personal visits. In fact a number of NGOs involved in providing alternatives to promote SAD for HEIA but due to time and resource constraints, it was decided to contact well-known and developed NGOs in SAD and accordingly 11 NGOs were studied. As the concept of SAD is new, farmers adapting this are found to be very negligent and scattered across the country. In fact many studies reported that it is very difficult to get adequate samples of farmers practicing SAD and hence not possible to follow any scientific methodology for sample selection. The present study too encountered this limitation and hence the selected NGOs were contacted through personal rapport and some of the beneficiaries were also interviewed.

Analysis and Discussion:

The selected NGOs do have strong resource and back up by various domestic and international donor agencies to carry forward the development of holistic and indigenous agricultural system - SA. These organizations do have network with local state supported agriculture research centers to acquire scientific inputs, albeit on limited scale on varietal development, plant based repellent preparation, compost making, farming techniques and a host of other aspects. The selected NGOs provide intensive training on LEISA, which leads to achieve SAD of the interested farmers and encourage them to disseminate the same to their fellow farmers. Some of the selected organizations hosted and organized national and international level meets (conferences and seminars) on SAD, where not only farmers and NGO volunteers but also eminent scholars and administrators actively participated. Such meet in turn helped for networking, influencing the public policy and ultimately disseminating the concept of LEISA and SAD at grass roots level. NGOs have also demonstrated the activities for promoting SAD on their own experimental plots and some of these agencies have large size of farm plots exclusively meant for sustainable farming principle. The selected NGOs helped the local farmers to establish market outlets for products obtained under sustainable farming philosophy. However, there are certain issues, which could not successfully taken up by NGOs due to various institutional and technical reasons. Firstly, despite the NGOs intervention, the concept of SA did not reach large number of the peasants. Secondly, the government – both at center and state – does not push SA packages rigorously, though the union government is waken up of late. Thirdly, farmers give importance only for modern farming system (HEIA) as it gives immediate returns whereas LEISA takes from 3 to 5 years to stabilize higher production. Fourthly, SA needs intensive and extensive involvement, which is possible only by committed family laborers and it is not possible for larger landowners and perhaps the institutional support of NGOs needs intensive campaign.

Summary and Conclusion:

It is clear that the thrid sector active intervention made some dent in LEISA in India. However, one has to be more caution as it is highly sensitive to food security and intensive research must be carried out covering various agro-climatic and environment conditions. Model farms on SA have to be developed in collaboration with public sector organizations and perhaps the krishi vigyan kendras (agriculture stations) can be nodal agency to take up this. Since there is a demand for these products in western countries, separate wing for processing, packaging and marketing has to be evolved in collaboration with NGOs. The government of India very recently proposed to set up a national research center for organic agriculture and this center may take advice from the established and reputed NGOs for promoting SAD. Noted individuals and philanthropic agencies, working on SAD may be identified to lend institutional support and involvement has to come from all sectors like government and NGOs.

References:

Aurora G S, V S Parthasarathy and V Ramaswamy (1994) Voluntary Organizations and Rural Development, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, (mimeo).

Brett, E A (1993) Voluntary Agencies as Development Organizations: Theorising the Problem of Efficiency and Accountability, Development and Change, 24(2):269-303.

Muttalib M A (1987) Voluntarism and Development – Theoretical Perspectives, The Indian Journal of Public Administration, XXIII(3):399-419.

Pingali P L (2001) Environmental Consequences of Agricultural Commercialisation in Asia, Environment and Development Economics, 6(4):483-502.

Rajendran S (2003) Catalystic Role of VOLAGs for Community Irrigation Management – Evidence from Tribal Areas of India, at the Third ISTR Asia and Pacific Regional Conference to be held in Beijing from 24th to 26th October.

Reijntjes Coen, Bertus Haverkort and Ann Waters-Bayer (1992) Farming for the Future, Macmillan, Netherlands.

Date received: September 25, 2003

Copyright © 2003 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # call-97.