Sikkim’s Organic Success

Having gone fully organic in January 2016, Sikkim has now received the seal of commendation from the world community. Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling was presented the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Future Policy Gold Award in Rome last week. Considered to be the ‘Oscar’ for the world’s best laws and policies promoting agro-ecology, it is creditable that Sikkim has won the race for this award by beating 51 nominees, including the likes of Brazil, Denmark and Quito of Ecuador which shared the Silver award. FAO Deputy Director Maria Helena Semedo had words of praise: “Sikkim is an outstanding example on how to successfully transform the food system and ensure respect for people and the planet”. On his part, Chief Minister Chamling said that an organic world is “definitely achievable”, and made an appeal to the world community “not to carry out development work and business at the cost of the environment”. He can well bask in the accolades, but back in 2003, Mr Chamling took quite a gamble when he steered his State to the organic path. Leveraging Sikkim’s small size and economic backwardness, he had the vision that the Himalayan State would be best served by an agri-development model which preserved its ecology, the habitats of its unique flora and fauna — which in turn would form the base for eco-tourism and guarantee thriving livelihoods. Procurement of chemical fertilisers and pesticides was restricted and later banned, subsidies for farmers under this heading were scrapped, and the Sikkim Organic Board was constituted. This was followed by a phased programme of designating villages as ‘bio-villages’, setting up vermi-culture hatcheries and automated greenhouses, selecting high-value crops like ginger and cardamom for trade potential, including organic farming in school curriculum and starting compulsory training of farmers. In 2010, the Sikkim Organic Mission was launched to speed up conversion of Sikkim into a ‘100% Organic State’, and within 6 years, the entire agricultural area in the State was certified as organic. All throughout, the thrust of the mission was to make it broad-based in the entire State population and bring about behavioural shift among all farmers to adopt organic methods.

What needs be appreciated is that Sikkim’s experiment was directly opposed to the Centre’s policy of kowtowing to the powerful chemical fertiliser and pesticide lobby. The State government put its trust on the indigenous knowledge of the people, which encouraged them to innovate and produce a wide variety of bio-manure, feed and organic seeds, devise sustainable pest control methods and improve soil health. The message went out that the soil had been contaminated enough, and it was the responsibility of each Sikkimese to do something about it. At the same time, specific action plans were implemented for each ecosystem and each crop. With the State gone organic, economies of scale were achieved in segregating, packaging, labelling and marketing of produce, though there is still much to do in capitalising on the ‘organic’ tag. Another point to be appreciated is that going organic means smart farming and therefore harder work. The farmer has to constantly balance cropping and soil needs, he has to know about soil microorganisms and how to maintain a beneficial microclimate for them. The UN FAO citation has, therefore, noted how Sikkim has reached “beyond just organic production to include socio-economic aspects such as consumption and market expansion, rural development and sustainable tourism with its comprehensive and inclusive approach”. But when it comes to producing enough food to match the needs of its 6.2 lakh population, Sikkim still has quite a distance to go. A large part of its food has to be imported, mostly from West Bengal, all grown with chemical fertilisers. This puts the farmers of Sikkim at a disadvantage because their produce has to compete with those from other States. The Sikkim government has therefore put its focus on high-value, certified organic food exports. For a State like Kerala that aims to go fully organic, as well as North-eastern States for which organic farming has been touted as desirable, ensuring full access to bio-inputs and raising farm productivity will require serious efforts. While every State has to devise its own model, Sikkim deserves kudos for political will in sticking the course and in involving the people from the bottom up.