CCFI alleges scam in organic farming
Federation alleged massive fudging of figures of growth of organic farming in India
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2014-11-06 00:19 GMT
Mumbai: The Crop Care Federation of India (CCFI) has alleged massive data fabrication and fudging of figures of growth of organic farming in India and suspected siphoning off of funds, by the government’s National Project on Organic Farming (NPOF). The project had an initial outlay of Rs 57 crore. In 2007-08 and 08-09, '231 crore was released and a subsidy of Rs10,000 per hectare was given for promoting organic farming.
India’s organic farming has actually declined from 3.88 million tonnes (mts) in 2010-11 to 1.24 mts in 2013-14 but the subsidy has been increasing, said S. Ganesan, advisor to the Federation. It even expr-essed doubts on whether the produce claimed to be organic was actually so.Dr. C.D. Mayee, former agricultural commissioner, said he had tested 20 samples of bio-products in government labs and found they all contained insecticides. He had innumerable such instances.
Rajju Shroff, president of the federation said they were not against organic farming but organic products were not regulated so farmers do not know what they are getting.
The latest data on orga-nic farming shows India has only 0.5 million hect-ares out of 140 million hectares of cultivated ar-ea under organic farming, said Mr Ganesan.
Citing one of the alleged frauds perpetrated by the NPOF, he said their data for hectares under organic farming in Delhi shows 12,734 hectares (ha) in 2009-10 and this dwindled to 266 ha the following year and zoomed to 1,00,239 ha in 2011-12 and was down to 58 ha in 2012-13. “The total geographical area of Delhi is 1.48 lakh ha and of this according to NPOF, over one lakh ha was brought under organic farming,” said Mr Ganesan. In a letter to the Prime Minister the federation has asked for a forensic audit into NPOF.