NEW YORK, December 21, 2006–Prime Minister of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, Professor Samdhong Rinpoche, will travel early next month to South India to make an assessment of one of his pet pilot projects: an eco-friendly farming initiative to serve as a model, showing all Tibetan settlements in India that it makes good economic sense to abandon the four-decade-old chemical farming practice and switch over to organic farming.
Professor Rinpoche will inspect an enclave of 86 acres in the Tibetan settlement of Bylakuppe, an acreage that serves as a research and training institute for organic and natural farming, and is put under the cultivation of rice, lentil, peanut, ragi (finger millet), regular millet, soya bean, sun flower, green manure and a wide variety of vegetables.
Bylakuppe is the biggest Tibetan settlement in India with a population of 18,000.
“Even though much of this year’s harvest has already been reaped, when Professor Samdhong Rinpoche visits the farm, he will find different types of beans in full bloom,” Tibet.net reported.
About 150 kilometers away is another Tibetan settlement, Kollegal, where a small number of farmers volunteered in 2003 to take part in the first ever pilot project, much before Bylakuppe.
In 2004 the pioneers of Kollegal Tibetan settlement reported an average increase in yield of 35 percent as compared to neighboring cultivators.
The matter was helped further by the fact that the pioneering farmers no longer had to invest heavily on expensive chemical fertilizers, pesticides and hybrid seeds.
They also saw heart-warming signs of micro-organism returning to soil, which they knew portended well for the future. And, things have gotten better since then.
The challenge however is to sell the idea to mainstream farmers, who continue to engage in chemical farming.
This is likely to prove an uphill task insofar as the switch-over in the initial years would demand a great deal of labor, time and care, which would have been fine if the land-holding were sizeable enough to make farming a viable means of livelihood.
Unfortunately, land-holding in Tibetan settlements is so tiny — less than one acre a person—that settlers cannot imagine themselves bettering their life through agriculture and animal husbandry. In Kollegal, for example, there are more than 4,000 refugees with only 3,000 acres of land. Bylakuppe’s 18,000 Tibetans have only 4,800 acres of agricultural land.
Presently, much of settlers’ time and energy is spent on the sweater business, a far more lucrative occupation than farming. Hawking jumpers and other warm garments on the sidewalks of Indian cities is the economic mainstay for 50 percent of Tibetan refugees in India; farming has become at best a secondary occupation.
Economic benefit of sweater business, however, comes with its curse. It is gnawing at the social fabrics of the community as able-bodied men and women are forced to spend months on the footpaths of great Indian cities, far away from their settlements, far away from their children and elderly parents, far away from the cultural institutes built so painstakingly over so many years.
To counter this unfortunate situation the exile government formulated a comprehensive plan to build a robust economic life in the settlements, a component of which is a switch-over to organic farming, plus creation of other economic opportunities by introducing small-scale industries and service sectors.
Among many models of development, the exile prime minister chose the Gandhian model of local self-sufficiency and non-violent means of livelihood.
There are plans for the introduction of projects for solar and wind energy, soil and water conservation, rain water harvesting, organic composting, and many other related projects, all of which are estimated to cost $3 million.
The exile prime minister is convinced that as time passes organic farming—ultimately leading to natural farming—will demand much lesser labor, giving settlers more time than ever before for other economic activities and cultural pursuits.
On being elected to the highest political office of the Tibetan exile government in September 2001, Professor Samdhong Rinpoche, said his government would make efforts to give a new lease of life to the settlements.
This government’s socio-economic policy, he said, would draw inspirations from the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, Masanobu Fukuoka, and Schumacher, he said.
“We will consider making efforts to protect the environment of Tibetan settlements by starting forestation projects with emphasis on medicinal plants that are suitable to the geographical conditions of respective settlements.”
“In addition, we will consider promoting traditional animal husbandry practices, which will pave the way for the use of organic manure, organic pest control, and bio-gas,” he said.
