The farm is flat

8220;Now that we have the EU certification we are free to export to Europe8221;, Dheeraj Wakode said triumphantly. He was beaming with confidence. 8220;We8221; in this case referred to about 100 Vidarbha farmers that his organisation had persuaded to follow the prescribed practice that would ensure certification for their farm products. These were hardly very fancy products 8212; moong, udid and soyabeans 8212; crops they have always grown, as there are few other choices under these conditions. Yet, the Europeans were prepared to pay premium prices for the produce that could be certified as 8220;organic8221;. 8220;It suited us just fine8221;, explained Dheeraj. 8220;We had no money or credit to buy all these fertilisers and pesticides anyway. Now we have to be extra careful, but the payoff is good.8221; 8220;I have been posted in Akola to arrange for the supply of organically grown cotton from the area. My job is to ensure that farmers who have contracted to produce it use practices that constitute 8216;organic8217; farming8221;, explained Pramod Awatade. His employer 8212; Arvind Mills of Ahmedabad has targeted the European market where consumers are prepared to pay a premium for textiles made from organically grown cotton. Most of the contract farmers are small dry land farmers. 8220;We gain and they gain8221;, he explained further. Himmatrao Tuppey boasted that the whole village of Kothari had gone in for orange orchards following his own example. Traders come from distant markets like Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Delhi to truck the produce away. The signs of prosperity are visible even among farmers holding one or two acres. 8220;I am now thinking of guavas. I have heard that it is an even more lucrative fruit8221;, Himmatrao added. He hardly seemed like a hopeless Vidarbha farmer lacking in initiative.

What is strange about these conversations is that they took place in Akola in October 2008. Akola is in the heart of Vidarbha 8212; the land of farmer suicides where the people are supposed to have little initiative and the institutions are known for their non-performance. And isn8217;t economic liberalisation supposed to push poor farmers further into poverty?

Looking at the above success stories in Vidarbha, we get a very different picture. Farmers here are becoming aware of the opportunities that globalisation has opened up, and are quite willing to take advantage of them. In the completely dryland area, Dheeraj has managed to find a solution to the paucity of water and credit by finding an international niche. All he needed to do was to be an entrepreneur intermediary between resource-less farmers and the exporting agencies. He had to be a coordinating agent who persuaded enough farmers, and create enough of a scale, to make it worthwhile for an exporting agency to make contracts. He had to be a conduit of information, and take responsibility for quality control. In the next case, Arvind Mills 8212; a corporate entity has taken on the coordinating role. In Kothari village, the coordinating process took place naturally by emulation by fellow villagers. In fact, it requires little coordination. Oranges are a high value crop and a few acres can fill a truckload.

Economic liberalisation can benefit even the poorest of farmers. Of course, it entails some risks. For example, it can increase price volatility and cause hardship in the short run. But the policy response should be to mitigate the short run hardship through schemes such as futures market, insurance schemes and credit rather than to dump the baby with the bathwater. Instead, on the pretext of fighting globalisation, the so-called friends of farmers have little hesitation in supporting export bans on various commodities.

Farmers are driven to inaction because our sanctimoniously preached policy blocks all the avenues open to them. The least we can do is to applaud the enterprise of people like Dheeraj, Himmatrao and others who are charting a path that others could follow.

Ashok Kotwal is professor of economics, University of British Columbia. Milind Murugkar researches agricultural policy at Pragati Abhiyan and is a fellow of the India-China Institute