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Local/Global Encounters
Sustaining Agriculture-Based Livelihoods:Experiences with non-pesticidal managementin Andhra Pradesh
G.V.RAMANJANEYULUAND V. RUKMINIRAO
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ABSTRACT
G.V. Ramanjaneyulu and V. Rukmini Rao argue that theIndian agrarian crisis is due to lopsided policies in technology and  support to farmers, faulty regulatory and market systems.Experiences with scaling up an ecological model of pest management in agriculture in Andhra Pradesh provide an important breakthroughin promoting sustainable models in agriculture.
KEYWORDS
pesticides; farmer’s knowledge; Community Based Organizations; local resources
Introduction
Farming in India evolved over centuries through farmers’ innovations in identifyinglocallysuitablecroppingpatternsandproductionpractices.InIndia,thecolonialperiodled to breakdown of sustainable systems resulting in a crisis of food production during1960s. In response India strived for food self-reliance. The country chose to use high-yielding varieties (more appropriately high-input responsive varieties) and chemicalsin what is popularly known as the green revolution. This continued in the quest tomodernize agriculture that has promoted an increasing use of high-yielding varieties/hybrids, chemical pesticides and fertilizers across crops and situations displacingfarmers’knowledge, own seeds and practices.The country became self-reliant in grainproduction forawhilebut farmers lost their self-reliance inthe process due to excessivedependency on external inputs. Farmers are now caught in serious ecological andeconomic crises manifesting in the forms of migration, indebtedness and in extremecases, farmers’suicides.In response to the deep crisis in agriculture, farmers and various support organiza-tions are trying innovative approaches to sustainagriculture. One such initiative is the‘Non-Pesticide Management’ (NPM) of crop pests, to reduce the costs of cultivation byadopting a set of practices based on farmers’ knowledge supplemented by modernscience that makes best use of local resources and natural processes by the farmersandWomenSelf Help Groups (SHGs) in AndhraPradesh (AP). NPM is one of the compo-nents of the‘Community Managed SustainableAgriculture’programme with technicalsupport from Centre for Sustainable Agriculture and its partner non-governmental
Journal: DEV Disk used Despatch Date: 10/10/2008Article : ppl_dev_lg2-51-4 Pages: 1–9 Op: KGU Ed: PRASAD
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organizations (NGOs) and financial and adminis-trative support from the Society for Eliminationof Rural Poverty (SERP), Government of AP. Duringmonsoon (
Kharif 
) in 2007, more than 350,000farmers from 1,800 villages in 18 districts of thestate were practicing NPM in more than280,000ha in various crops. Sixteen of thesedistricts are part of the 32 districts with seriousagrarian crisis identified by the Government of India. The savings by rejecting chemical pesti-cides, in cost of cultivation on pest managementranged from US$15^150/ha without affectingthe yields.The savings onthehealthcosts arealsosubstantial.
Pests, pesticides and the distress
Among the production inputs inagriculture, che-micals especially pesticides occupy major shareof costs in crops like cotton, chillies and rice. Thepest resistance and resurgence due to the abuseof pesticides propelled mainly by a lack of aware-ness, regulation of pesticide marketing extendedoncredit with high interestsby‘all-in-one dealers’(money lenders cum dealers of seeds/fertilizers/pesticides) and lack of market support ended uppushing hapless farmers into a vicious debt trapfrom which suicides were sought as a way out.The pesticides that were promoted to solve thefarmers’ problems were consumed by farmersto kill themselves.Pesticide poisoning of human beings throughexposure to the toxic fumes while spraying is alesser known and lesser acknowledged aspect of pesticide abuse in places like Warangal in AP(Kuruganti, 2005a, http://www.csa-india.org;Mancini
et al 
., 2005, www.ijoeh.com), Tanjavurin Tamil Nadu (Chitra
et al 
., 2006) or Batinda inPunjab (Mathur
et al.
, 2005). The socioeconomicand environmental conditions in which theagricultureworkersandsmallandmarginalfarm-ersworkdonotpermitthemtoadopttheso-called‘Safe use practices’ often promoted by industryor agriculture scientists (Kuruganti, 2005a,http://www.csa-india.org).Therearealso several reports onthe chronic ef-fects of the chemical pesticides on farmers(Mathur
et al 
., 2005), growth and development of children (Kropp
et al 
.,2005, http://www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/; Kuruganti, 2005b, http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye) and women’s re-productive health.The chemical pesticides leave larger ecologicalfootprints in manufacturing (e.g. Bhopal gas tra-gedy, a gas leak from a pesticide manufacturingunit killed more than 20,000 people during1984),storage, transport and usage polluting the soils,water and air. The pesticide residues in food, soiland water enter into the food chain and causeserious health problems to human beings andother living beings (Karanth, 2002; Kuruganti,2005a, http://www.csa-india.org; Kuruganti,2005b,http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye). The pes-ticide residues are even found in human milk(Down to Earth, 1997). Over time, soils in thepesticide-sprayed crop fields can become low innitrogen compounds, so more fertilizer is neededto produce the same yield (Fox
et al 
., 2007,www.pnas.org cgi doi 10.1073 pnas.0611710104).While the inevitability of pesticides in agricul-ture is promoted by the industry as well as publicresearch and extension bodies, successful experi-ences are emerging from farmers’ innovationsthat call for a complete paradigm shift in pestmanagement.
Shifting paradigms: NPM
Looking for solution to the ecological and eco-nomical problems of pests and pesticides in agri-culture gave rise to several eco-friendlyinnovative approaches that do not rely on the useof chemical pesticides. These initiatives involvedrediscovering traditional practices to controlpests.Contemporarygrassrootinstitutionalinno-vations promoted by the government, supplemen-ted by strong scientific analysis, supported bycivil society organizations led to upscaling theprogramme inthe state of AP.The ‘NPM’ that emanates from collaborativework of public institutions, civil society organiza-tions and farmers (women and men) in APshowshowdiverseplayerscancometogethertogeneratenew knowledge and practice to evolve moresustainable models of agriculture.
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Pests are not a problem but a symptom. Distur-bance in the ecological balance among differentcomponents of crop ecosystem makes certain in-sects reach pest status. From this perspective,evolved the NPM which is an‘ecological approachto pest management using knowledge and skillbased practices to prevent insects from reachingdamaging stages and damaging proportions bymaking best use of local resources, natural pro-cesses and communityaction’.
Generating successful villageexperiences
Punukula: the pesticide-free village
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Punukula, a smalltribalvillage in Khammamdis-trict in AP, created waves by formallydeclaring it-self pesticide-free in 2003. Farmers here gave upusingchemicalpesticides forcropssuchas cotton,chilliand rice ^ all knownto use notoriouslyhighquantities of pesticides.The Punukula farmers demonstrated that theysave up to US$75,000 annually on agriculturalinputs byadopting NPM.With a total of 240ha of farmland in the village each farmer has been ableto save at least US$300 per season, as they do nothave to buyexpensive pesticides (Figure1).
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Enabavi: another village shows the way 
Enabavi is probably the first modern-day organicfarming village in AP. The entire village, in eachacre of its land, on every crop grown here, hasshunned the use of chemicals in agriculture.Theyneitherusechemicalfertilizersnorchemicalpesticides in their farming. This in itself meanta tremendous saving for the village in monetaryterms.Enabavi, with just 45 households in the villagebelonging mostly to the backward castes, startedshifting to non-chemical farming about five yearsago.Then in 2005^2006, the entire land of113hawas converted to organic farming. Special train-ing sessions have been organized by CROPS
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, a lo-cal NGO to rope in children into this new systemof cultivation inthe village.The farmers here grow their food crops of rice,pulses, millets, etc., mostly for household con-sumption. In addition, they also grow crops likecotton, chilli, tobacco and vegetables for the mar-ket.Theiraveragespendingonchemicalfertilizersand pesticides across crops used to be aroundUS$220/ha, while it was around US$31.25/ha
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forseeds.This more oftenthan not meant credit fromthe input dealers, who would also double up astraders for the produce. These traders woulddictate the price for the produce in addition to
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Habitat conversion andenhancementStress pest/ enhance beneficialsReactive inputsBuild healthy soilsOther practices toreduce crop stressReducing pest numbersMinimal pest damageGrowing healthy plantsLocally adapted, resistantgood quality seed
Figure1:
Non-pesticidal management ^ schematic representation.
Ramanjaneyulu & Rao: Sustaining Agriculture in Andhra Pradesh
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