Performing alternative agriculture: critique and recuperation in Zero Budget Natural Farming, South India

Abstract

This article explores how 'Zero Budget Natural Farming', an Indian natural farming movement centered on its founder and guru Subhash Palekar, enacts alternative agrarian worlds through the dual practices of critique and recuperation. Based on fieldwork among practitioners in the South Indian state of Kerala and on participation in teaching events held by Palekar, I describe the movement's critique of the agronomic mainstream (state extension services, agricultural universities, and scientists) and their recuperative practices of restoring small-scale cultivation based on Indian agroecological principles and biologies. Their critique combines familiar political-ecological arguments against productionism, and the injustices of the global food regime, with Hindu nationalist tropes highlighting Western conspiracies and corrupt science. For their recuperative work, these natural farmers draw, on one hand, on travelling agroecological technologies (fermentation, spacing, mulching, cow based farming) and current 'probiotic', microbiological, and symbiotic understandings of soil and agriculture. On the other hand, they use Hindu nativist tropes, insisting on the exceptional properties of agrarian species native to, and belonging to India. I use the idea of ontological politics to describe the movement's performances as enacting an alternative rural world, in which humans, other-than-human animals, plants, mycorrhizae, and microbes are doing agriculture together.Keywords: agricultural anthropology; alternative agricultures; naturecultures; critique; ontological politics; small-scale cultivators; India; Kerala; Subhash Palekar

Zero Budget Natural Farming in India: Aiming Back to the Basics

“…policies, researchers etc.) [23] and promoted ZBNF through 'seeing is believing' approach. Khadse and Rosset [13] recognised Palekar's way of communication to the farmers in their own farming language during training programmes and consideration of simple practices rather than sophisticated ones to explain at initial stage for better understanding as some key factors behind the popularity of ZBNF among the farming community.…”

“…However, there is further need of suitable policy for ZBNF to take off properly. Nevertheless, Palekar's movement (ZBNF) is arguably the most popular and widespread movement so far in the context of Indian agro-ecological system [23].…”

“…NAAS [31] has concluded ZBNF as a myth and critically emphasised that although there may be some maundering instances of yield increments with ZBNF, quantum jump in the same is not possible without considering chemical based agriculture. Detailed reviews by many [23,35,36,37,38] have also put ZBNF under question. Saldanha [26] has mentioned that in spite of various promotional activities on ZBNF, very little communications regarding its socio-economic feasibility and environmental impacts have been actually made.…”

Playing development roles: the political ecology of performance in agricultural development

“…By probing the roles or scripts adopted by communities and individuals, we analyze how farmers improvise in the field, cultivate identities, and promote agricultural development on their own terms. Articles concerned with performances of farmer identity discuss roles, scripts, and stages constructed in certified organic agriculture, the system of rice intensification (SRI), agrochemical marketing, Fairtrade, and other agricultural models that present alternatives to conventional or green revolution farming (Flachs 2018;Maat 2018;Münster 2018;Sen 2018). Other articles consider performance and agriculture more generally, commenting on the nature of improvisation, the construction of spectacle, and the power of charisma (Glover 2018;Richards 2018;Stone 2018).…”

Farming as a performance: a conceptual and methodological contribution to the ecology of practices

“…The analogy can be taken further if we perceive that the farmer's overarching task is to orchestrate a performance that involves nonhumans, such as plants, soils, earthworms and fertilisers, as well as the humans who make up his or her labor force (see Münster 2018). In the language of Actor Network Theory (ANT), the farmer creates a stage or venue where a diverse cast of human actors and nonhuman 'actants' may be 'enrolled' and 'interested' in achieving the farmer's goals (Callon 1986).…”