Three years ago, Venkat Shobha Rani quit her job as a primary school teacher to help her husband tend to their 1.2 hectare farm, part of a growing number of rural residents in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh who are moving to organic farming including there temples.
Shobha is now one of several hundred small farmers in Andhra Pradesh who are participating in the government’s natural farming program launched in 2015 as an alternative to burdening farmers with rising costs of fertilisers and chemicals. This initiative is perhaps unique in India.
Production costs for farmers are rising even as their incomes are falling, pushing Andhra Pradesh, like many other Indian states, into an agricultural crisis. The project, designed to help farmers switch to organic produce, is seen as a pivotal experiment, and other states are following closely.
The program has been rolled out across the state with the goal of attracting one million farmers this year to partially or fully organic farming.
In mid-August, Shobha again approached a government agency to supply organic Bengali gram (chickpeas) to the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam temple dedicated to her favourite deity, Lord Venkateshwara, also known as Vishnu.
Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD), one of the richest temples in the country, needs a steady supply of chickpea flour for its laddu, round sweets that are made in the temple’s huge kitchen.
The temple produces and sells tens of thousands of laddu every day to pilgrims and devotees, as they are considered the vessel for the blessings of Lord Venkateswara. Other ingredients include ghee, cashews, raisins, cardamom and jaggery. Most of them are also now purchased from organic farmers.
The main agricultural season in India is now in full swing. Part of the Shobhi farm is occupied by cotton crops. The chickpeas she planted in a nearby plot at the end of October will be harvested early next year.
Across the state, new organic farmers such as Shobha are being enlisted to supply their crops, including chickpeas and rice, to TTD, hailed as an “extraordinary decision” by the temple foundation.
The temple, which hosts between 60,000 and 70,000 devotees daily, decided to switch to all-organic products in May, inspired by a believer’s donation of chemical-free rice to the temple in 2021.
Last year, the temple launched its pilot project by purchasing 1,300 tons of organic chickpeas from farmers like Shobha. That’s less than a tenth of the chickpeas he uses in a year.
Last year, Shobha sold 2,500 kg for a trial run of the temple for at least 10% more than the minimum price set by the government.
To ensure this transition in the future, TTD has entered into an agreement with Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS, or Farmer Empowerment Organization), a government non-profit organisation that oversees the natural farming project.
Under this, RySS will supply 12 organically grown commodities including rice, palm sugar and cardamom from these farmers in exchange for TTD supplying livestock from their cow shelters to the farmers so their manure can be used as fertiliser.
Eleven other temples in Andhra Pradesh followed suit. Together they placed an order for 25,000 tons of certified organic produce for the 2022-2023 agricultural season. The decision, according to government officials, gave a big boost to the organic farming campaign in Andhra Pradesh.
Up to 25,000 farmers will be hired by the end of this year to meet this demand, Kumar said. As part of a pilot project last year, 430 farmers supplied the temple with 1,300 tons of organic chickpeas, Kumar said, earning an average of Rs 10,000 ($121) per ton.
Only 1 percent of randomly tested samples were rejected due to pesticide residues.
Critics, however, point to tension between newly established government centres that continue to sell chemicals in every one of the 10,000 villages where RySS is trying to wean farmers away from traditional farming.
RySS will closely monitor the agricultural operations of registered farmers from seeding to harvest.
But it faces the challenge of purchasing goods harvested at different times, processing them from specific mills, controlling storage and quality, and securing year-round supplies.
To help with this, AP-Markfed, the state marketing federation, has taken care of purchasing, payment, storage, shredding and processing, and transportation.During the pilot run, the scheme worked to the benefit of both farmers and TTD.
According to RySS, in the village of Shobha Rani, 20 organic farmers have committed to supply Bengali gram for the temple. Together they will produce about 40 tons.
In the nearby village of Gollala Guduru, Umadevi and her husband Yi Sambasiva Reddy have just signed up for the program. They are among the 51 households in the village that have gone organic.Meanwhile, Shobha is excited for several reasons.
She will earn a higher return on her organic chickpeas and the money will be in her bank account within a few days. But apart from that, her products will go to the preparation of laddu, an offering to the deity, and the devotees will enjoy them.
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