DRK newsletter 35 on Zero-budget Farming and its rebuttal
Bodhi Dhanapala bodhi_dhana@yahoo.com
Unfortunately, DR Kaarthikeyan and other good hearted people who are trying to promote what they call "Vedic" agriculture, or zero input agriculture etc., are actually doing a great dis-service to India, and to our neighbouring countires who often follow the lead of India.
Because everyone is nostalgic about the past, we like to hear about using traditional methods. We think life was easy and simple and "sustainable" in the "good old days".
People have forgotten how millions of people were poised to due of starvation because traditional seeds, and traditional manure (cowdung, bone-meal etc) which at best can produce 1 to 1.5 metric tonnes per hectare of land, could not cope up with the rapidly rising population of India, and indeed right through out south asia. Modern mineral fertilizers, and modern hybrid seeds like IR8 came to save India. With the rice variety known as IR8, A 29-year-old Indian farmer called Nekkanti Subba Rao (now an old man) was one of the first to discover the variety's extraordinary properties. Yield was 10 tonnes per hectare", he told the BBC World Service Business Daily programme, recalling that first monster harvest some 50 years ago.
We like to think that the "Rrishis" had laid down the best wisdom and we should simply follow them - and the old books of the priestly strata has everything we need to know.
But we forget that traditional methods failed to feed India, and millions lived in hunger in the old days, with famines and pestilences going hand in hand, and even today people are hungry and most rural people are malnourished. Traditonal methods need 5 to 10 times more land and more water than modern methods to produce one kilo of rice. Today we have not 10 times but 100 times and more than the population that
Bharat had in ancient times, and those methods are at best good to feed a small niche market.
People have forgotten how millions of people were poised to due of starvation because traditional seeds, and traditional manure (cowdung, bone-meal etc) which at best can produce 1 to 1.5 metric tonnes per hectare of land, could not cope up with the rapidly rising population of India, and indeed right through out south asia. Modern mineral fertilizers, and modern hybrid seeds like IR8 came to save India. With the rice variety known as IR8, A 29-year-old Indian farmer called Nekkanti Subba Rao (now an old man) was one of the first to discover the variety's extraordinary properties. Yield was 10 tonnes per hectare", he told the BBC World Service Business Daily programme, recalling that first monster harvest some 50 years ago.
When D.R. K is pushing ideas that are consistent with modern science, I agree with him. But most of the time he is pushing ideas contrary to modern science, and some of his statements are NOT based on fact.
D.R.K's latest new letter says that a cow will produce 10 Kg of cowdung per day.
and that it is enough fertilizer per hectare. This is just not true.
Also, the soil naturally contains traces of heavy metals like cadmium, arsenic, lead. They are also enhanced y human activities (use of lead containing petrol, coal burning, metal workshops etc). Plants do not have kidneys. So, when plants absorb water from the ground, they also absorb these heavy metals traces, and they accumulate in the plants and the amount in the plant can be 100 to 200 times what it is in the soil. This is called phyto-accumulation. . So if the soil naturally contained one hundredth of a milligram of cadmium per kilo of soil, the plant will have 2 mg of cadmium per kilo of soil. If this plant (say, paddy straw) is used in composting, the compost will be very rich in cadmium, arsenic, lead and other heavy metals. These are very toxic to humans. So, successive recycling of straw and other farm products in the same farm will be very bad for the health of the farmer. There is no such danger in using urea (made from atmospheric nitrogen and steam using solar energy via the Harber process) or mineral phosphates dug from the ground. They may contain some traces of heavy metals, but there is no high levels as in plants.
All these problems, and other problems are glossed over in D. R. Kaarthikeyan's writings, as they are dazzled by the idea of going back to the past - an idea attractive to the Brahman caste thinking as that "varna" represents the favored, elite rich stratum that "organic agriculture" caters.
There are others, like Vanadana Shiva, who have also opposed usingmodern scientific methods and modern seeds. For example, she has opposed the introduction of "golden rice", which is made from hybridizing normal rice with a carrot gene where by the rice has vitamin A, preventing child blindness. But she wants you to buy only one of the nine seeds sold and endorsed by her organization, namely "NavadhanYa".
These traditional seeds do not produce enough harvest, and do not help you in health terms.
Unfortunately, Premier Narenda Modi is some what receptive these retrograde-looking people because of his background and links to ultra-orthodox people.
If we adopt this retrograde ideas that look to the past, a very small number of rich people who can afford "organic food" which costs 10 times the normal crops, can eat, while the remaining 95% of the population will have to go hungry.
So, misunderstanding and mixing Hinduthva concepts with agriculture will be a grate tragedy to India, not only economically, but in human costs. We take from the past what is good (mostly moral truths), and from modern science what is good for us.
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