GROWING PAINS
There’s more organic food out there than ever before, but it’s difficult to access and even harder to identify. A look at how the organic movement, despite the big bucks invested by the government, is failing both the farmer and the consumer
On paper, India’s organic movement looks fantastic. We’re home to almost 6 lakh organic farmers, the highest tally in the world. We rank ninth in area under organic agriculture. This financial year, we’ll spend a record ₹350 crore on it.
Our educated middle class is already convinced that food grown with pesticides, hormones, chemical fertilisers and bio-engineered genes harms both the body and the earth. All the farms in one state, Sikkim, are now organic. And urban organic farmers are all over the place, smiling out of news reports about how they quit their corporate jobs to grow tomatoes.
Yet, in bazaars, supermarkets and restaurants, it’s hard to find certified organic fruit and vegetables. A shop’s ‘organic’ section stocks tea, spices, honey, even organic peanut butter and chocolate – the smallest components of our meals. Most product labels carry leafy logos. But no one can quite recall one from memory, let alone explain what it represents.
Why hasn’t the party reached our plates? Because India’s organic revolution, well-meaning and steadily growing, is a bit of a mess.
We have the most farmers. But the vast majority are on tiny holdings, whose output isn’t big enough to push up production numbers. The acreage that puts us in the top 10 constitutes only 1.1% of our fields. In contrast, 11 nations have 10% or more organic farmland. Our ₹350 crore record pales against this year’s ₹70,000 crore spend on chemical fertiliser subsidies. Sikkim’s journey took 15 years.
There simply aren’t enough urban farmers to make a difference. Meanwhile, India’s largest organic producers, companies with thousands of farmers and hectares, sell the bulk of their processed food abroad, where profits are higher.
But domestic interest is growing. In Goa, Karan Manral and his wife, Yogita Mehra, have been helping local farmers go organic and find buyers. “I get 25 calls a month in Goa from yoga studios, wellness farms, restaurants, and families who want produce. I can barely meet the demand.”
Manral’s challenge echoes one that India’s farmers, sellers and even policymakers increasingly face: how to get fresh organic food from growers to buyers quickly, safely, cheaply and consistently.
“I feel I’m standing atop a hill, with the farmer and the consumer on either side. Neither can see the other,” Manral says.
SEED CAPITAL
Organic fruit and vegetables need a separate supply chain – down to their own delivery trucks and crispers in supermarkets – because you can’t label every carrot.
In cities, farmers’ markets have had some success. But they’re less convenient than the anytime trip to the bazaar or supermarket. There are also subscription services that home-deliver farm-fresh greens. But you can’t choose which veggies you’ll get, so customers simply opt out.
It’s why farmers prefer to grow produce for companies that will process them into non-perishable, high-profit foods: mango jam, kale chips, ready-to-drink soup and white turmeric powder.
Surya Shastry, who heads the Bengaluru-based company, Phalada Agro, sells everything from organic tur dal to pasta sauce online. His company was started in 1999 and catered to exports until he found enough local demand to launch his processed-food brand, Pure & Sure, in 2011.
The trick to getting farmers to go organic and stay organic, he believes, is to make it financially worth their while. “If a farmer does not find buyers, even for a year, he’ll go back to his old ways,” he says. “We have 1,500 farmers and 8,000 acres – small for an old company. But our focus has been to first build a robust market. That’s what keeps growers in business.”
Processed-food companies even help their farmers get organic certification from the government – expensive, but globally recognised proof that the yield was obtained without chemical shortcuts.
But those who grow for direct consumption, typically small farms at the edges of your city, have a tougher task of proving their produce is clean. They get little expert advice and even after certification, struggle to find buyers since there are no agricultural produce market committees to channel organic food into our bazaars.
“From the beginning, the government’s focus has been on exports rather than its own people,” says environmentalist Claude Alvares, director of the Organic Farming Association of India, who helped organise the Organic World Congress (OWC) in November in Greater Noida. “It took nearly 15 years for us to develop domestic certification; this cost us a great deal of credibility.”
At the inspection and organic certification firm Ecocert-india, Amol Nirban, a regional sales manager, says they’re now in the process of certifying an organic pineapple farm in Meghalaya – “the best quality you can find”. But the logistics of delivering them inexpensively to even Delhi are still proving close to impossible.
“There are plenty of incentives for the organic grower, few for the supplier,” he says. Bio-fertiliser is subsidised, there’s help to build a compost pit. Loans to set up a farm come easier too. But there are no government schemes for anyone building a separate fleet of refrigerated vans or brokering organic deals with supermarkets.
Even farmers struggle to eat organic food at every meal. Jacob Zachariah and his wife Mini Pant have a 12-acre farm in Gholwad, outside Mumbai. Their orchard yields enough fruit for two, but they have organic veggies only four days a week, organic rice, twice a week. “Eating all organic is possible only if it’s available and can be sourced easily,” Pant says.
GREEN TURN
But things are changing. Alvares recalls starting out in the 1980s, when farmers and officials were interested in the issue. In contrast, the Union minister for Agriculture inaugurated the OWC, and state ministers attended. “Ministers used to ask ‘What does organic mean?’, now they ask ‘How do we go organic?’” Alvares says.
At the Congress, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), announced new steps towards making organic food easier to buy, sell and understand. It launched new regulations for safety and standards and a common logo to identify organic food across both certifications by next year. It is also developing a portal to help consumers verify authenticity of organic foods available in India.
“The initiatives will not only help build consumer confidence, but also accelerate the growth of trade and commerce in organic foods within India and abroad,” says Pawan Agarwal, CEO, FSSAI.
India’s first university for organic studies is being planned in Gujarat. Meanwhile, says Manral, our farmers need high-quality knowledge dissemination to unlearn the chemical-heavy techniques of the past.
A reassessment of India’s organic footprint is also needed, says
Alvarez, one that accounts for the country’s many uncertified organic holdings, tribal and regional crops, and traditional knowledge.
“People are already interested in organic food,” says Manral “If we can make it reach them consistently and get them to trust it, the problem will take care of itself.”