The nitrogen fix

OLD Shivanna returning home from work as a night watchman stops by my gate to brag about the beauty of his mango trees in blossom. He steals a sly look at the not so beautiful chikkoo trees on my farm and goes on about how no tree can equal the beauty of the flowering mango. I ask him if he has also sprayed to "fix" the blossom. He answers in the negative and is not keen to pursue the conversation. A couple of days later, the mango trees look even more beautiful with dewdrops on them, but it destroys all that profusion of flowers blackening much of it and worse, preventing fruit formation. Not far from my farm a roadside motel by name "Dew drop inn" is located amid a cluster of mango trees. Dew drops on mango blossoms make a pretty sight for poets but nightmare for farmers. I grew up believing that "fixing" crops was the job of the birds and the bees.

As summer approaches it is a barren, dry landscape I see all around except for the green rim at the edge of the dry fields. Only a few women are in the fields grazing the cows on the leftover stubble of grass. Our workers set fire to a big heap of coconut fronds in a barren corner of the farm and as the flames go up, I see the women walking briskly towards my farm, out of fear and curiously to see what is happening. One of them looks at me accusingly and says what a waste it is to burn all that fuel when there was such a shortage of firewood in the village.

The last two years I had tried in vain to get the villagers to bring me ash in exchange for the coconut fronds. One villager had conned me into giving him cartloads of fronds without bringing me any ash in return. I had got smarter in the meanwhile and demanded they bring the ash first. I had some success with this but the women who came to barter prevented others from coming because they were worried that the supply of fronds would get exhausted. Setting fire to one heap of the coconut fronds had the desired effect, many came to barter ash from their hearths for precious fuel wood. The landed villagers were self-sufficient in their need for firewood as also the ones who could obtain them from the common lands adjoining their lands. The poor had no other means of getting firewood except to walk miles collecting twigs, to steal or buy. Those who were ready to dig the roots of huge big trees from newly cut trees could get the roads for free. The owners of lands were happy to get rid of the roots from their lands. There is a tremendous shortage of firewood in these villages.

What is needed in the villages is a sensible utilisation of the resources that are available locally. Farmers bury or burn their woody farm wastes to generate enough potash and at times we burn more fuel wood than is necessary for our domestic use. A little bartering between fuel surplus farmers who need potash for their lands and the villagers in need of fuel wood can help in alleviating each other's problem to a certain extent. Supplementing potash deficiency with wood ash alone is not recommended by those advocating chemical farming because the potash content in wood ash is considered to be low. Twenty kg of wood ash is said to be equivalent of 2 kgs of potash, an adult coconut palm is said to require 2.2 kg of potash per year. I have wondered how it has been possible to determine with such precision the requirement of a coconut tree.

Organic farmers face difficulties in finding natural fertilizers during the cultivation season in comparison to the chemical farmers who can buy it easily in the open market. The porblem is serious for those of us living great distances from the forested lands from where decaying leaves and top soil can be collected that is rich in moulds and beneficial micro-organisms necessary for enriching the soil. It takes years of patient work to build degraded soils and achieve self-sufficiency in fertilizers. The cost of groundnut cake, neem cake, neem seed, vermi-compost, silt, cow dung, bone meal, fish meal (yes, it stinks!) poultry manure, horse manure, husk, pressed-mud which is a waste product from sugar cane mills are some of the materials used by organic farmers to fertilize their land and are expensive and not as easily available.

Conversion from chemical to organic cultivation is a gradual process and takes years. It is unfair to compare the productivity levels of the organic farms to those using chemical inputs. Any sensible assessment or comparison has to also look into aspects such as the quality of soil and water, plant (including weed) diversities, bird and insect population, and incidence of pest attack on crops in a chemical farm and that in a organic farm. It is widely believed production falls if chemical inputs are withdrawn completely and as a solution, mixed farming is recommended by horticulture and agricultural departments. That is using the NPK fertilizers along with natural fertilizers and a set of practices beneficial to the building of healthy soil, such as moisture conservation methods, rotation of crops and so son. If a pest problem occurs, using chemical sprays and may be also experimenting with biological controls, mechanical devices, what is called "integrated pest management" are all accepted as part of the mixed farming approach.

A successful farmer friend following mixed farming practices, told me recently that he was shocked to see the effect of NPK fertilizers on earthworms. He had introduced earthworms in the basins around the coconut trees which he took care to mulch heavily. Weeks later he also applied the recommended amount of NPK fertilizers. He was shocked to see earthworms burst open when they came into contact with chemical fertilizers. The role of red ants in keeping pests away is still not recognised and farmers use DDT powder to get rid of them. We spray to "fix" the blossoms and "induce" flowering, and eliminate pest with lethal chemicals that kill honeybess and ants that are the natural pollinators.

Organic fertilizers break down slowly and that may be drawback if you want to grow crops qickly for the market. That is only one way of looking at it. It could also be argued that since organic fertilizers break down slowly the plants are able to absorb the nutrition slowly just as a human body does from healthy eating habits.

Decades of research has not resolved the controversy over what is the right kind of nutrition for plants. Chemical fertilizers are to plant what processed foods and cola drinks are to the human body. There is no dearth of studies to show the dangers of excessive fertilizer and pesticide use in agriculture. India proudly claims to be the third largest producer of nitrogenous fertilizers and has over sixty large scale industries manufacturing a wide range of nitrogenous and phosphatic fertilizers. The average consumption of fertilizers has increased from one kg in 1991-92 to 74.8 kgs per hectate in 1996-97. Urea alone accounts for 60 per cent of the total fertilizer consumption, no wonder the politicians see big bucks to be made by importing Urea. Soil acidification, poor aeration and water absorption capacity of the soil as a result of excessive use of chemical fertilizers has become a major problem. This obsession with "fixing" nitrogen with nitrogenous fertilizers are despite the widely known facts that much of the nitrogen applied is lost by leaching or escapes into the atmosphere. It is also known that plants absorb energy and nutrition from different and varied sources such as from leguminous crops and from the atmosphere. Even natural ways of farming when taken to extremes such as adding too much animal manure is detrimental to the health of the soil as well as the environment.

Over the years, governments in power has preferred to import chemical fertilizers rather than look to setting up small scale, village level initiatives to make fertilizers from wastes. Tank and river silt if used can be a cheap source of nutrition for plants. De-silting of tanks received some attention from the government here in Karnataka but it still has a long way to go because between the panchayats approval for de-silting of certain tanks, calling for tenders and actually getting down to remove the silt, cultivation seasons come and go. Three years ago when the nearby Bilikere tank was de-silted, the government did a splendid job of loading silt at its own cost to the private lorries and tractors hired by the farmers. The Bilikere tank had been drying up but has been full of water since the removal of silt. The one catch for the organic farmers is that the silt may contain chemical residues due to run off from neighbouring farmlands.

No attempt is made to utilise human wastes such as from public urinals and toilets. Someone from Hyderabad recently wrote to me about a restaurant on the Mysore-Bangalore highway that had been diverting urine from its public urinals to its coconut gardens. Such a scheme had been planned in the old Mysore state by Sir M. Visvesvaraya under the aegis of the Mysore Economic Conference. In those days, an initiative of this kind had to have the approval of not only the Maharaja's government but also the British government which ideally liked to have money in the State's coffers so that its share of the revenue from the State was not endangered. Today it is the national and international chemical fertilizer lobbies and their patrons in government who will prevent low cost initiatives from being implemented. They will talk about the need to keep up the present rate of agricultural productivity and hence the need to subsidise chemical fertilizer industry. They will pretend concern for India's food security which might be threatened if "unscientific" organic farming methods are implemented. This lobby has economic and political clout to "induce", "fix" not only nitrogen and Mango flowers but even governments that talk of Swadeshi.

PUSHPA SURENDRA

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