You have the capacity in you to ask for and demand safe food, to buy the same and thereby uphold the health of your family even as you support the Anna Daata who is keeping all of us alive – our farmer. The shift to non-chemical agriculture will mean cost-saving on inputs as well as medical-care for farmers too!

Very often, one hears Malthusian arguments around pesticides and why they are needed (to feed the growing billions, we need adequate food to be produced, crop losses due to pest damage to be reduced and so on). However, these arguments around the need for pesticides or other toxic technologies like GM, in the name of food security, are fallacious. There is evidence to show that non-chemical approaches like NPM need not, and will not result in yield losses. In fact, in Andhra Pradesh, an evaluation report by the state agriculture university of the 'Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture' programme (CMSA) has reported yield increases with adoption of NPM in different crops! Organic farming most often translates itself into diversity and greater nutrition in our food. Better net returns to poor producers should itself mean better chances of accessing food! At the macro-level, better remuneration promised to farmers in terms of better prices has always translated itself into record production, shattering the myths around food production, pointing out that solutions are not just at the technology level but elsewhere.

This shift to non-chemical agro-ecological approaches of cultivation requires massive changes to take place, including the government having to create at least a level playing field between organic agriculture and chemical agriculture. Today, organic agriculture receives very little investment in terms of research or extension, especially when compared to chemical farming. For farmers to first build their conviction again on organic farming, to understand how to go about it, to take up the shift in a collective fashion and then to actually be able to market such organic produce to you and me, investments from the state are a must! Investments are needed on capacity building, on collectivization, on community managed extension systems, on research and innovation, on small-scale infrastructure for marketing support etc. etc.

Read on to understand more about Safe Food and Farming, where you can buy organic food around India, where resource persons/agencies are present for supporting the shift to non-chemical agriculture and what you can do as part of INDIA FOR SAFE FOOD MOVEMENT to put pressure on the government to do its bit.