Promoting organic folk rice in Bengal, India

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Anupam Paul, Assistant Director of Agriculture, Government of West Bengal, India, is in charge of the Agricultural Training Centre, one of seven in the province, at Fulia, district of Nadia, WB, India.

Employed by the government, his job is to be the link between Agriculture policy and schemes of the government and the farming community. But Paul is a maverick and breaks the typical mould.

The government policy is largely influenced by the agrochemical industry, and six out of seven training centres in the province promote that practice, which is neither sustainable, nor economically viable, and is poisoning the planet and the consumers.

Mr. Paul is a maverick that breaks the mould. He is conserving hundreds of folk rice types on one side, some collected from Dr. Debal Deb, and the rest from farmers, to be distributed to other farmers that wish to make a transition to sustainable organic farming of folk rice. On the other side, he uses completely organic and chemical free methods to plant and conserve rice in his institution, and trains visiting farmers and assistant directors of agriculture, to do likewise.

It is a wonder that the government is allowing Paul to go organic at his training centre. It is also encouraging to see that his efforts are, while an exception to the rule, is influencing a small but rising group of rice farmers to go sustainable, go desi (farmers of indigenous folks rice), and go chemical free.

I visited the Agricultural Training Centre at Fulia in late March 2018 to see what was happening there, including meeting some farmers, some assistant agricultural directors from various regions of Bengal and hear their story about promotion of organic cultivation sustainable chemical free folks rice varieties.

Here is another 90 second video, where Mr. Tathagata Das, Assistant Agricultural Director from Rampurhat town of district Birbhum speaks to me of his own experience in promotion of organic rice farming and his conviction that this is the only sustainable way of cultivating rice.

There is a need to raise awareness about the dangers involved in chemical dependent hybrid rice, which have adverse effects on human health, on wildlife, on ecology, on farming economy and is based on a systematic industry driven propaganda of lies.
 
There is also a need to provide a link between organic rice farmers and consumers, so farmers can economically benefit by selling these better rice varieties and cutting out as much as the corporate middleman as practical, so consumers too can find high value food at reasonable prices.
I am scheduled to meet another person, who has been trying to link these organic rice farmers, to potential urban clients. Organic food business is going to grow as more people become aware of the chemical attack through biocides and convinced about the need for clean food. However, to keep prices reasonable and within reach for the poorer strata of the population, there might be a need to find ways to restrict profiteering by the middle man.
There should also be a need to offer honest testing, certification and labelling so people can rely on these to separate clean clean from toxic and heirloom folk varieties from imported, even genetically tampered traits.
 
More on these issues down the line – watch this space.

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