Clover Organic’s Founder and CEO, Sanjay Aggarwal was introduced into the world of beneficial microbes by accident in the late 1990s and while working with them realised their awesome potential to create a better world. However, he quickly realised that the mere application of products cannot solve organic problems faced by mankind, microbes need an environment to do their amazing job. He started creating ecological and innovative solutions in the field of wastewater treatment, solid waste management, agriculture, aquaculture and animal husbandry and thus was born Clover Organic.
Sanjay reminisces, “From childhood I liked to be outdoors and carried a great passion and love for nature. My mother never put her hands inside my pockets for fear of coming across a frog, a moth or something equally interesting! The inspiration to start Clover was to protect and conserve nature. It was an unconscious decision really. It took time to formulate the vision, which is now Clover Organic.”
He felt that even if you do organic farming in its purest sense and you have garbage being thrown near you or a smelly sewage stream near your farm, you are not really organic. “Natural resources must be preserved at all costs. Development can happen along with natural resource conservation and not at its cost. Look at Biomimicry for further inspiration! Hence, to that extent we are actually ‘re-inventing sustainability’ in many ways,” he affirms.
In line with the vision, Clover Organic provides complete handholding across the value chain – support in terms of organic production, certification, processing, entrepreneurial mentorship and marketing of the produce. Not only in organic agriculture, but in aquaculture as well.
That was way back in 2008. How has the organic market in India evolved since then? Sanjay shares, “Organics started in India in the mid 1990s and picked up momentum thereafter for many reasons. Initially, owing to lack of knowledge I guess, we decided to copy the West, keeping in mind the same old adage – West is the Best! Organics was looked at by scientists and our bureaucrats through the conventional lens. It was still input driven and not really system driven.” Besides, multiple myths surrounded organics at the time – yields crash or can never be equal to conventional, we need 30 tons of compost per acre to provide the desired nutrients needed by the crop!, we are defenceless against pests and diseases in the organic regime, organic means high premiums, certification time must be 3 years, etc.
Organics is becoming mainstream
With time and wisdom setting in some of these myths were addressed to some extent, while some still exist. He observes, “India, with its huge diversity in terms of agroclimatic conditions and culture of people can never fit into a narrow European mould. People are realising this and a change is slowly taking place.”
Sanjay is happy that organics is very slowly becoming mainstream and more affordable as production is rising quickly to meet a steady growth in demand (CAGR of about 30%). PGS certification has been developed to break the shackles of a Western distrust system, many companies have come up with great products for growth promotion and pest control.
He says, “People are slowly realising that organics is a system driven approach and cannot be just run on inputs. Focus is now shifting to the soil and not the crop as a complete departure from the conventional system of farming.”
Sikkim has just become the world’s FIRST fully organic state. Commenting on this milestone, and whether other states in India can follow this role model, Sanjay is sceptical, “I think the Government needs to decide what they exactly mean by an ‘Organic state’. Merely certifying lands under organic at least to my mind, cannot really make a state Organic. There is no doubt in my mind that Sikkim was the first State to take a bold decision and go organic. They have done a commendable job. I am sure they are working on other aspects of improvement like waste management, financial sustainability, ease of doing business, building internal markets etc.”
He feels that organic wrapping should be based on the mindset of people and environmental concerns. Not every farmer can do organic farming. This is more true in large contributing states like Punjab, Haryana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, etc. “Similarly, organic farming must be done in Indo-Gangetic plains, our islands and all mountain states where environment conservation is top most priority. The Government of India has already launched MOVCD scheme for all the NE states and PKVY scheme for rest of the country. They have come up with ‘Namami Gange’ scheme for conserving river Ganga from toxic chemicals. These are steps in the right direction,” he lauds.
Sanjay believes that the North East or for that matter all mountain states need to become organic. The very obstacles to conventional farming in these regions act as enablers for organics. Some of these are as follows:
- Most lands are rainfed. Hence, difficult to use chemicals, but organic farming can take place in very little water.
- Landholdings are very small, which does not find favour with conventional. Under organics, small is beautiful.
- Most farmers have been practising traditional farming for a long time, which can easily graduate to organic.
- In the mountains, farming takes place with the support of natural resources like forest, animals and culture etc
He adds that there are state level agencies built by each state in the NE to implement organic farming. MOM stands for Mizoram Organic Mission and there is MOMA as well – Manipur Organic Mission Agency. He works very closely with all of them.
The market in Uttarakhand
The market in Uttarakhand is surprisingly large as compared to other small cities due to the demographic pattern. Sanjay points out that there is a large number of upper middle class population here. Many of them are part of reverse migration due to the pandemic and many corporate executives work from here. Air connectivity being good (20+ flights a day) also helps. There is a good awareness of organics due to the presence of academicians here as Dehradun is a city of schools. Foreigners in Rishikesh and Hardwar are big buyers of organics, he affirms.
Clover Organic has 2 broad product lines – range of organic certified inputs for agriculture, aquaculture and waste management that the company manufactures in its factory and a range of organic products that it has recently started selling. All the products are organic certified under NPOP certification. Currently, Clover Organic has received multiple inquiries for both the range of products but have not yet explored the export markets as it is still getting the plan together.
As for giving back to community, the company has initiated many Youth development programmes. “We work with students to give them hands on experience of organics. Many of them feel that food comes from the refrigerator and not the farms. We believe that it is important for them to understand the importance of food production as they would develop the necessary respect for the food and the farmers, which is very important and this way, they would practically get lessons in Biology and Environment Conservation, which is equally important,” Sanjay reiterates.
The company also has two types of farmer training – Training of Trainers (TOTs) and Training of Farmers (TOFs). There are multiple field operatives who Sanjay likes to call Master Trainers. He explains, “We need to continuously provide training to them on various topics like: Organic Package of Practices – green manuring, crop rotation, mulching etc; Relationship building skills with farmers and FPCs, Post-harvest Management – grading, cooling, cleaning, packaging, processing, collecting and disseminating ITKs (Indigenous Technical Knowledge) etc. We are planning to open FTS (Farmer Training Schools) across different geographies. Any farmer can walk in and get trained on organic technologies and learn about marketing, etc.”
There are 2 types of farmer collectives – FPC & FPO. FPC is Farmer Producing Company under the Company’s Act of 1956 and FPO is Farmer Producing Organisation under the Society Act. FPC is a new form of collective and has multiple benefits over FPOs.
Future roadmap for Clover Organic
Sanjay envisions, “Clover 2.0 defines our purpose as: Enabling sustainable prosperity for the value chain by utilising nature’s wisdom, implemented through fruitful partnerships. We want to grow in our chosen verticals of agriculture and waste management across different geographies. Lots of exciting new products and technologies will be launched and vibrant partnerships created across the value chain. We will be strongly creating our organic markets both in the B2B and B2C segments in select cities. We have lofty plans of creating a Publication wing, Training department and of course, Consultancy Services in the select areas.”
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I hope my views are taken in the right spirit and helps people to get a better perspective of organics.