Science, Not ‘Cow Agenda’, Benefits Women Organic Farmers
The government’s push for natural farming is rooted in cow-centric policies. But creating a science-based information ecosystem is key to empowering women farmers
A government campaign that pushes the use of urine and dung from indigenous cows has improved women farmers’ access to information, but our interviews with women farmers in Gujarat showed that science-based organic farming practices would help beneficiaries more.
In Rajkot’s Ramaliya village, 50-year-old Hansaben Gadhiya said that her life moved slowly, like that of a “tortoise stuck in a well”, till she started attending the monthly meetings of a self help group through which information about natural farming practices was being disseminated. She started experimenting with these in a small way and her life changed. “I felt like a frog that managed to jump out of the well and started experiencing the world,” she said.
For nearly five years, Hansaben has been attending the training sessions on natural farming held by the Centre for Environment Education (CEE) in collaboration with government officials and agricultural universities. They taught her how to replace chemical fertilisers and pesticides with natural inputs like buttermilk, cow dung and urine, and dry leaves.
It was at these meetings that Hansaben, who has been farming her land with her husband for almost three decades, learnt a new farming technique. “Just how we need soap to wash our face and make it shine, plants need phosphorus for the leaves to be green and bright,” said Hansaben. “Before this, we just followed our neighbours and tried to outdo them. If they used four sacks of fertilisers, we put five to increase our profits.”
The natural farming project is promoted under the national mission on natural farming and is implemented by the district-level Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA) by creating farmer groups and providing training. But it is the NGOs who work more closely with the farmers by running regular training sessions, offering facilities like soil testing and paying krishi sakhis (community resource persons trained to provide information and awareness on farming).
Information has been the key in transforming Hansaben’s farming practices. But women farmers find it hard to access it though they do most of the farm work. Hansaben had attended her first group meeting around 10-15 years ago on how to create a self help group. “I really liked it but I could not go for years after that because I had no time and my husband did not allow me to go,” she said.
Five years ago, when a CEE staff member urged her to come to meetings, she started going again. “My children had grown up so I could find the time,” she recalled. As she went to more meetings, she started realising that she needs to change the way they do farming. But her husband was not ready to listen to her. “He told me that we cannot listen to women,” she said.
With no choice left, she urged her husband to give her control over a small part of their farm where she could put to use the methods she learnt. “For three years, I spent the nights away from home, at the hut near the farm to collect cow urine and tried natural farming practices,” said Hansaben. Improving soil quality in her patch of land and good yield convinced her husband to make the complete transition to natural farming.
Natural farming, distinct from organic farming, has its roots in the ‘Zero Budget Natural Farming’, a concept popularised by Subhash Palekar. It involves using dung and urine of indigenous cows to treat seeds (beejamrit), mixing it with pulse flour and jaggery to make fertilisers (jeevamrit) and mixing it with leaves, green chillies, garlic and neem leaves to make pesticides.
Despite limited evidence about its success, reported by an ICRIER-NABARD study, the Indian government has been promoting this style of natural farming since 2019-20. It began in eight states through the Bharatiya Prakratik Krishi Paddhati (BPKP), and was scaled up as the National Mission on Natural Farming in 2022. The study compares two comprehensive studies on natural farming– a study conducted in four locations in Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh by the Indian Institute of Farming Systems Research (IIFSR) – an institute affiliated with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and another a field survey from 13 districts of Andhra Pradesh by Centre of Economic and Social Studies (CESS) and Institute for Development Studies Andhra Pradesh (IDSAP).
These studies show differing results on natural farming’s impact on yield and success. And the ICRIER-NABARD report, citing this disparity, concluded that there is a need for more long-term experimentation before declaring this as a nationwide agriculture practice.
In October last year, we travelled to villages in seven districts of Gujarat to assess how women farmers in the area are adopting these practices, what kind of success and gendered challenges that they have faced. In the first of a three-part series, we will look at why the policy should abandon its cow-centricity and instead should be aimed at ensuring women farmers have easy access to clear, scientific knowledge on farming practices.
Information Ecosystem For Women
A two-bigha farm in Bhavnagar district’s Mamsa village is the primary source of income for Gauriben and her family of four. Until a couple of years ago, she only grew bajra and wheat for household consumption while working as a daily-wage labourer.
Over the last two years, 25-year old Harshaben, a krishi sakhi from the village supported by Utthan, an NGO, has been providing support and training to Gauriben. This enabled her to adopt multicropping by growing vegetables and reduced her spending on fertilisers and pesticides.
Now, every 2-3 days in a week, Gauriben takes a shared rickshaw ride to Bhavnagar city, 15 km away and sells vegetables worth Rs 300-400. In addition to training in natural farming, krishi sakhis like Harshaben also act as support helplines.
“The meetings have become important avenues to discuss the issues women are facing with farming and seek solutions,” said Harshaben, who works with 60 women from three self help groups in the village. “There is no other way in which [farming] information reaches women. We guide them in documenting all that they do on the farm, including what fertilisers and pesticides they use, on which dates and what their results have been and how much they have earned. All this helps them make informed decisions.”
Women also call her and ask her to come visit in case of emergencies, she added. “Earlier, we would take the infected leaf to the agro store and put whatever medicine they give us,” said Gauriben, “Now we know what we need to do.”
When asked if Gauriben knew how to access information through any other means including Kisan Call Centres or the district-level Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA), she said that she knows of none. “I don’t have a mobile phone so I cannot call anyone either.”
Over 75% of rural women work in the agricultural sector but they have limited access to timely, accurate, and reliable information. This impacts their agency and undermines their ability to make decisions.
“Earlier, I would just do what my husband told me to do. But now he asks for my opinion and we decide together,” said 45-year-old Hansaben, who also lives in Mamsa.
Krishi sakhis, unlike ASHAs do not get fixed honorarium, but like ASHAs are entitled to receive fees based on the activities that they conduct. While the government says that a krishi sakhi can earn up to Rs 80,000 a year, the ones we met earned only Rs 2,500 per month and that too was paid by the NGO. “They calculate it at the rate of Rs 250 per day for 10 days in a month. But the work is not limited to just 10 days, we have to be available all the time. So, 10 days of work then becomes 15 days,” said Harshaben.
Cow Dung Is ‘Pure’
A key part of the scheme around natural farming is the focus on indigenous cows and their products used in farming. This focus, partly driven by Hindutva’s cow-focussed political agenda, also prevents women from accessing these policies, adding to their costs.
In Gujarat, two schemes were launched to promote natural farming: one a subsidy of Rs 1,248 for a natural farming kit and the second one a long-standing support scheme with a monthly assistance of Rs 900 for maintaining one cow. Having an indigenous cow with an identification is one of the three criteria to be a beneficiary. Of all the women that Behanbox interviewed, only one, Hansaben, had access to this scheme.
Women form a major part of the livestock workforce and it is an important parallel source of income for them. But indigenous cows only form a small (11%) proportion of the total milk producing animals in India. Moreover, their yield at 4.2 kg per animal per day is significantly lower than that of crossbred cows (8.35) and indigenous buffaloes (6.63).
In Bharuch district’s Vedach, Manjulaben’s self help group was awarded the best group in the district for following natural farming practices. The 55-year-old quit using chemical fertilisers in 2016 and since has been utilising the dung and urine from her two buffaloes. Despite her group being registered at and appreciated by ATMA, she will not receive the benefits of the only support-based scheme under the mission.
In some cases, the focus on the indigenous cow has also led to unnecessary expenses. Gauriben who has two buffaloes does not use their dung or urine and instead buys cow dung and urine from local vendors to make the inputs. She said she was taught that only cow dung and urine will work.
“In our training we were told that there is more bacteria in cow dung and hence it is better,” said Harshaben, quickly adding: “They say so but we have not tested.” Palekar’s belief that only the dung and urine from the native variety of cattle has the ability to replenish the soil with necessary microorganisms, was challenged by the scientific community, found a report released late last year by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) and National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD). Agricultural scientist KV Prabhu told the report’s authors that it is laughable to believe cows fed the same food as per body mass ratio can have different microbial composition.
Others, like Hansaben believe that it has to be the waste of indigenous cows because it is “pure”. This ideology is also foreshadowing in the way the processes and inputs are named–the suffix “amrit” in beejamrit and jeevamrit is the nectar of immortality per Hindu mythology.
Need For Scientific Decision Making
In an opinion piece criticising the natural farming policy shift, R Ramakumar, a professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and Arjun SV, a student at the institute, wrote about the absence of science in Palekar’s concept.
Long-term imbalanced use of fertilisers since the 1960s has led to soil and water degradation and other forms of pollution. While stressing on the need to address these issues, Ramakumar and Arjun underline the need for a scientific approach that hinges on soil test-based balanced fertilisation and integrated nutrient management methods along with location-specific interventions.
Soil testing is key, said Sardarsinh Gohil, senior coordinator at Aatapi Seva Foundation, an NGO that works with communities in Bharuch district. “It is like the medical tests that we do. They tell us what is good and bad with our bodies. Similarly, soil testing helps us find out what the soil has and what it needs.”
The natural farming mission also underlines the importance of soil testing. The guidelines state that soil from at least 30% of the fields of the members of the natural farming clusters should be tested at repeated intervals. But these tests were not conducted in all the locations that we visited and in locations like Gajera where they are regularly done, ATMA officials would not get the test results back to the farmers.
In Bharuch and Bhavnagar, NGOs involved in promoting natural farming practices are taking it upon themselves to conduct these tests and provide farmers with the results and providing them with catered solutions to specific problems.
Manjulaben has now started intercropping cotton with pigeon peas to fix the nitrogen in the soil. “If I grow pigeon peas one year, then next year the cotton crop will be better,” she said.
Adopting these new strategies has reduced her input costs while improving the yield, she said, adding that she feels empowered by the information given in the training sessions.
The soil test results also provide motivation for women farmers. When Gauriben started using natural fertilisers, her yield dropped in the first year. But when the test result showed that her soil quality has improved and salinity has decreased, she decided to continue with it for another year, and she saw a higher yield.
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