Tibet Goes Organic

SR: My name is Samdhong and usually people know me as Samdhong Rinpoche or as Rinpoche. I live in India for the last forty-six years as a refugee from Tibet and I work for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and at this moment I am the elected political leadership of the Tibetans in exile. That’s all. …In Dharamsala there are about ten thousand which are mostly constituted by students in four different schools and in the administration there are about three hundred people and the rest of the people, around a few thousand. So this is in Dharamsala. In general there are in India, there are about ninety-eight thousand Tibetan refugees settled in India, little less than a hundred thousand.
RF: Scattered around.

SR: Yeah, scattered around. Most of them settled in South India, Karnataka state… (Regarding Bija Vidyapeeth)… I am not personally here to learn and to go back and to teach, but all of my settlement officers and all the settlement agricultural extension officers keep coming here and they are trained by this institute, at the first in the organic farming and now we have many other consultants in the south, because it is a bit far away from the larger settlements, so we have set up consultants in the south but the settlement officers are… regularly keep coming here and get five days, six days or sometimes three days, sometimes two days workshop, training and consultations. So the Bija Vidyapeeth is one of the main… our resource person… our resource consultancy is done by Dr Vandana Shiva ji and her other workers and we are always keep coming here to consult and to learn.

RF: Why Navdanya?
SR: Because Navdanya is doing very good work, fine work in North India and secondly they are not business people and they do most of the work for free and charge the minimum, minimum requirement and also they have various experiences, actual experiences that are built non only in the theoretical. So therefore we find it very nice…When I took over as the political leadership in my administration, without much thinking I have set out a few guidelines for our job and firstly I said that my administration will be doing everything on the basis of three guiding principles: truth, non-violence and genuine democracy. These three guiding principles will guide all my decisions on my job. And then secondly I told the people whatever we do for our livelihood there should be four cross-cutting criterias and we shall have to examine within those criterias and these four criterias were: number one, non-violent; number two, eco-friendly, not harming to the environment; number three, sustainable and number four, reaching to the poorest of the poor. So these four are cross-cutting principles for all our community development projects. And within this criteria the chemical agriculture is absolutely not fitting. So therefore we want a violence-free agriculture and we want eco-friendly agriculture, we want a sustainable agriculture and therefore only the organic agriculture or natural agriculture is fitting within these criterias. So therefore we have to change from chemical agriculture to organic agriculture. And in the first two years we faced a lot of resistance and it was difficult. Last year, in the third year, we are quite successful. Now 2006 is our fourth year and during this period the majority of the farmers will enter into the organic agricultural system and our target is by 2008 the entirety of the Tibetan settlements will be converted into organic. So I think I will be able to do it.

There was a lot of resistance and there was also many people who said that ‘you should go gradually.’ And I was absolutely against for the principle of gradual. I said, ‘Yes or No. If we go, we go hundred per cent. We don’t go, don’t go… not go. But not gradually, gradually means nothing.’ So we did it two years back for eighty acres of land and it was succeeded. Until 2002 they are using excessive chemical and 2003 we just stopped abruptly and there was nothing…drawback and it was a great success and therefore now they have got more courage to do it. So now everybody is doing immediate shift over to organic.

If anyone, any person who wants some kind of more profitable and more sustainable then there is no way out unless you go to the organic otherwise the chemical which ruins the soil and which needs more and more inputs and then the farmers will have no profit and then every year the chemical fertilizers and the pesticides become more costly. So it is really… even you are not looking for a non-violent agriculture, even your own survival you have to change it otherwise the entirety of your soil will become absolutely non-productive. That is clearly serious. So it is… it is a compulsion rather.

RF: And the farmers are finding it more productive?
SR: Yes. Now farmers are finding it much more productive. Number one, their production increase each year – they are not decreasing. And number two, their cost inputs are decreasing every year and all the manual fertilizers and the necessaries are able to product by their own, without any cost. And then secondly the outcomes are much more, the yield is much more, and thirdly you can sell it for the higher prices than the chemical yields. So there are so many benefits. And then you can have your own seed and you need not pay high price for the seed and so on and so forth. This is very good, very profitable for the farmers. And then once the soil is come back to its own form then there is a drought or less irrigation also not much harmful, still you can have a good yield. This is the profit of… this is the benefit of organic agriculture.

RF: Are the Tibetan farmers primarily selling to Tibetans or are they also selling outside?

SR: No. Before they’re produce monocrop, only maize is being produced, and they hundred per cent sold to other companies and all their annual needs for their own consumption, food is purchased from the market – that is the biggest dichotomy for them. So now we are growing all our own needs and people reduce the need of purchasing from market is almost zero as far as food is concerned. Then the remaining yields are being sold in the market and now we are growing so many different crops and at least each farmer in their four acres of land they need to grow not less than eight different crops. So that is very interesting.

Interview and editing: Rosalyn Fey
Filming: Adam Breasley, December 3 2005