IDEX Executive Director, Rajasvini Bhansali, is currently traveling in India on evaluation field visits with IDEX partners, and potential catalyst grantees.
Heeralal explains the benefits of vermicomposting
With its gooseberry trees, guavas, mangoes and lemons flowering along with traditional crops such as maize and vegetables, Veni Ram’s horticultural garden looks more like an orchard. This beautiful farm in Godaghati also occasionally hosts gatherings of local farmers who consult with each other about their crops and share strategies to increase yields.
Veni Ram has been applying vermicomposting techniques to his farm since 2007, and during the meeting he spoke compellingly of how lemon trees made with traditional “khaad” or, compost are yielding shiny, ripe and delicious lemons that get grabbed up the minute he gets them to the market. On the other hand, the “urea” lemons—those grown with more industrial fertilizers—appear to be losing favor with the local market. Although the prices are the same, he noted, people seem to prefer organic.
Another farmer at the meeting shared a telling story from his own household. He had built his vermicomposting structure and had started composting more than enough for his farm. However, his son had yet to grasp the concept of vemicomposting and added a trough full of chemical fertilizer to the vermicomposting bin, believing that perhaps it would help the compost.
Although funny, the story gave a nod to the myth perpetuated by the Ministry of Agriculture and large agribusiness that chemical fertilizers such as “urea” are actually good for crops and soil. There are even training workshops aimed at small-scale farmers that tout the benefits of chemical fertilizers. However, the farmers have learned from personal experience that overuse of chemical fertilizers causes soil to harden over time, resulting in a decline in productivity. The farmers are choosing instead to utilize organic agricultural methods to, as one farmer noted, “restore life and living organisms to the soil.”
As Heeralal Sharma, a founding member and current director of Sahyog Sansthan reminded me, the future of the real India is in the hands of the rural poor. Rather than an India based on superpower supremacy and upper middle class luxuries in the midst of growing class disparities, this is the India that our freedom fighters envisioned more than 64 years ago. This is the India that people like Himmati Devi and Veni Ram are creating together with their families and communities, where individual dignity, social relations, communal ecology and indigenous culture are all celebrated and utilized as the basis for creating conditions for liberation.
During my visit, Heeralal remarked that grassroots projects should aspire not only to provide social services, but social transformation and liberation. At Sahyog Sansthan, I was happy to see this in action.
Leave a Comment
