We are a primarily agrarian community, a fact that has been burned into the back of our minds since childhood, so that the condition of farmers in our country wouldn't distort this opinion. A recent study by Professor K. Nagaraj of the Madras Institute of Development Studies reports that on average, one Indian farmer committed suicide every 32 minutes during all these years. Since 2002, that has become one suicide every 30 minutes. In the 20 years since the Indian government first started keeping track of farmer suicides, about 300,000 farmers have ended their own lives and more recently P. Sainath released a report stating that 60,000 farmers have ended their lives in Maharashtra alone since 1995. According to the 2011 census, the suicide rate for farmers is 47 percent higher than the national average. Needless to say, the numbers are terrifying.
Converting to organic cultivation is one of the many possible solutions to this problem. Our country has not yet crossed 1 per cent of the total agricultural land in terms of organic farming, which seems like a serious waste of potential. And organic farming will not only prove to be profitable to the farmers, but the environment as a whole.
It's all the more amazing then that the small hilly state of Sikkim has gone ahead to take matters into their own hands and become India's first fully organic state.
By converting approximately 75,000 hectares of cultivated land into organic farmland, Sikkim achieved this status in December, last year, but a formal declaration will be made by PM Modi in Gangtok on January 18, today. The Pawan Chamling-led state government had decided to make Sikkim a fully organic state back in 2003.
According to estimates, Sikkim produces around 80,000 million tonnes of farm products. The total organic production in the country is estimated to be around 1.24 million tonnes, while the total area under organic farming is merely 0.723 million hectares. A number of other states in India like Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Kerala have made statements about becoming organic too, and hopefully this will be a reality soon.