Make organic farming national policy: Bhaskar Save

Surat, Aug 5 (UNI) Octogenerian organic farmer and Gandhian, Bhaskar Save has sent an open letter to National Commission of Farmers Chairperson M S Swaminathan, asking him to adopt natural and organic farming as a national policy to prevent farmers' suicides.

Mr Save, who owns an organic farm ''Kalpavruksha'' at Umergam in Valsad district in South Gujarat, in his letter dated July 29, cited the mounting costs of agriculture, caused by chemical farming propagated by the agricultural universities in the country, as the main reason for the spate in the farmers' suicides.

''After the British left, Indian agriculture was recovering steadily. There was no scarcity of diverse nourishment in the countryside, where 75 per cent of India lived. The actual reason for rushing the Green Revolution was the much-narrowed goal of increasing marketable surplus of a few relatively less perishable cereals, to fuel the urban industrial expansion favoured by the government,'' the letter says.

''The new, parasitical way of farming you vigorously promoted benefitted the industrialists, traders and the powers that be. The farmers costs rose rapidly and margins dipped. Combined with the eroding natural fertility of their land, they were left with little in their hands, if not mounting debts and dead soils. Many gave up farming, many more want to do so, squeezed by the ever-rising costs...,'' the letter added.

Mr Save has sent the copies of the letter to Prime Minister, Union Minister of Agriculture and Chairperson of National Advisory Council also.

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