The Hindu : A digital path out of WTO maze for the State

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Oct 21, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram

A digital path out of WTO maze for the State

By C. Gouridasan Nair

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM Oct. 20. In these WTO-dominated times, it is hard to be an optimist about farming in Kerala. The prices of State's farm products are on the downswing in the global markets even as the cost of production keeps on climbing. New norms of `good agricultural practices' are getting adopted at multilateral negotiating tables far away from the Kerala shores and products from far and near are threatening to jostle out the home-grown varieties from the shelves in shops here. Where does the State stand in the emerging global farm trade scenario? What does the future hold for Kerala?

As the average Kerala farmer remains blissfully unaware of all that is happening around him and as policy planners wrack their brains for the right answers, one man has been trying almost single-handedly to cull information from diverse sources, place Kerala farm scene in the global context and explore a path for Kerala to emerge unscathed out of the WTO maze. For 42-year- old A.V. Narayanaswami, a coffee planter in Wayanad, it has been a labour of love--to his vocation as a farmer and as a Keralite concerned about the woes of the State's farm sector.

Over the last five years, Mr. Narayanaswami has created a huge database on the State's farm potential, the new norms of production, packaging, marketing and certification taking effect at the global level, the major players in the area of multilateral negotiations, the kind of expert services that are and that could be available to farmers and the manner in which the State's farming activities could be reoriented towards higher production from lesser extent of land and by a lesser number of people using the latest advances in biotechnology and cost-effective farming practices. As of now, he has generated 1,50,000 page views on a variety of farm-related topics.

The database, divided into different segments and modules, has information on scores of multilateral bodies of crucial importance such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), International Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), World Customs Organisation (WCO), World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), FAO, Common Fund for Commodities, International Grains Council, International Standards Organisation (ISO) and Codex Alimentarius Commission. The database has been created with the objective of using protected cultivation techniques, diversification of crop production, use of biotechnology, use of IT in agriculture, empowerment of cooperatives and development of human resource in agriculture.

It all started in 1997 when coffee cultivators began to feel the heat of a warming global market. Diversifying into nursery operations under low-cost greenhouses in floriculture, horticulture, plantation crops and medicinal and aromatic plants, Mr. Narayanaswami, his wife and two children collected 1,000 plant varieties and identified and indexed them. Through a painstaking process, he measured the light, temperature and relative humidity four times a day and digitised the data thus generated. His low-cost greenhouse experiment has helped him produce huge varieties of value-added fully grown potted plants, ready for display, grown in decorative containers of terracotta made by local artisans.

``You may not believe it, but the knowledge requirement at the farm level is impossible to be met without information technology. We looked around for such information, but found none that could give us a holistic view of the situation from a farmer's perspective. So, we decided to create one,'' says Mr. Narayanaswami as he narrates the story of the database which has already caught the attention of the State Planning Board and the State IT Mission. The latter has offered to disseminate through its network-in-the-making information on coconut farming which constitutes roughly 2,000 pages.

Mr. Narayanaswami points out that extensive documentation would be key to agricultural growth in future. For instance, the Government's decision the other day to declare Wayanad, Idukki and Palakkad as pest-affected districts would impact product certification for years to come and it would take painstaking work at policy, farm, documentation and communication levels to make products from the three districts acceptable at the international level. With the developed economies tightening the noose, certification processes would get even more stringent and any nation or State would be able to survive only if it keeps track of the latest changes, he adds.

He sees the excellent cooperative infrastructure in Kerala as the nodal agencies that could put his database to the best use on behalf the farmers. A panel of experts consisting of some of the best in their respective professions are being lined up to provide guidance and assistance online. Once uploaded, it would also be used as a documentation centre for individual farmers. The voluminous database itself is proposed to be translated into Malayalam so that it could be delivered at the farmers' doorstep over Internet access devices including TV on the dot net platform. ``With the country's highest credit repayment rate of 98.7 per cent, cooperatives in Kerala can act as engines for change in the farm sector using the database and new advances in biotechnology,'' Mr. Narayanaswami says.

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