Organic vegetables mushroom in Kerala ahead of Onam festival

KOZHIKODE: With Onam festival at the doorstep, and mushrooming organic vegetable outlets promising the truly organic vegetables, farmers’ initiatives, consumers and farm activists are wondering its genuineness.

The city itself now boasts of more than a dozen permanent outlets that sell organic vegetables apart from the temporary ones surfaced to meet the Onam rush. The largest among them is Vengeri-based Niravu and Janakeeya Jaiva Pachakkari Krishi, a pro-CPM organic farmers’ movement, apart from Elements, a decade-old natural foodstuff outlet.

Niravu has a network of 127 farming families which successfully metamorphosed the farming culture of Vengeri, a village on the outskirts, into an organic farming community. The CPM initiative has roped in hundreds of farmers who claimed to have sold out more than a thousand tonnes of vegetables through 71 outlets during Vishu. Niravu technical officer P. Babu told DC that the pro-organic market trend is only a two-year phenomenon aimed at befooling consumers.

“Whether it is Onam or any other event we have only limited stock sourced from our member farmers”, he said, adding that some of the Onam special temporary outlets simply sell the ordinary vegetables from other states with the ‘organic’ tag. “The problem is there is no way to test their genuineness. Only very few outlets have the mechanism to trace the farmer from the product, which is essential in the sale of organic farm products,” he added.

Elements head Tomy Mathew said organic farming is not at all an event-based affair. "With so many farmers jumping onto organic production as claimed by few organisations, a good price should be ensured for the product,” he told DC.

“During the Vishu season this year, organic farmers were forced to sell the vegetables at a lower price than other vegetables.” On the splurge of organic vegetables and mushrooming outlets, Mr Mathew said the market of biological farming is not at all organic.