Tibet Goes Organic

by Adam Breasley
I would like to contribute a piece for the felicitation volume for Rinpoche. My topic is my experience of Rinpoche’s collaboration with Dr Vandana Shiva and her Bija Vidyapeeth Earth University outside of Dehradun.

Rinpoche has for a number of years been one of the teachers, alongside Dr Vandana Shiva, Satish Kumar and other leading Gandhi-influenced thinkers, of the annual ‘Gandhi and Globalisation’ course held on Bija Vidyapeeth (School of the Seed or Earth University). The Bija’ as it is fondly known is set on an organic and seed conservation farm outside Dehradun in the foothills of the Himalaya. I, myself was a student of the ‘Gandhi course’ in 2005 while an intern on the school, which is an ashram-style residential school founded on Gandhian principles in the wake of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks. While at the school, we filmed a short interview with Rinpoche conducted by Rosalyn Fey on the topic of Rinpoche’s CTA administration’s decision to convert the Tibetan agricultural settlements to organic agriculture, for which they had been working with Dr Vandana Shiva and Navdanya.

This was rather a ground-breaking decision. Notably the Government of Bhutan has since been working with Dr Vandana Shiva to convert Bhutan to organic agriculture as ‘the world’s first organic country’. The project for Bhutan to convert to organic agriculture has garnered much international interest, however, I believe Rinpoche and CTA’s policy for the exile Tibetan community to completely convert to organic agriculture for all their Tibetan settlements preceded that of the Government of Bhutan and is as such worth mentioning as a ‘world first’, and one that is far-sighted. This collaboration between Dr Vandana Shiva, Navdanya and CTA was also included in a TV documentary program on Dr Vandana Shiva’s work for Swedish Television entitled ‘Bullshit’ a number of years ago which featured Dr Shiva visiting CTA and Rinpoche in Dharamsala. Below I have included a short transcript of the interview with Rinpoche conducted on the Bija Vidyapeeth on December 3, 2005, as Rinpoche here outlines very well the reasons for this conversion to organic policy for the Tibetan settlements and its contribution to a non-violent agriculture, to freedom of the seed, equitable healthy nutrition for all, improving ecological health of the soil, farmer livelihoods and water conservation – all of which continue to grow in importance in a world of globalised economic and ecological violence which is rapidly destroying the earth’s productive capacities and the climate.

In the interview Rinpoche outlines the decision to convert to organic in the context of the three overall guiding principles of his administration as elected political leadership of the CTA: truth, non-violence and genuine democracy. Moreover Rinpoche outlines the four cross-cutting economic criteria which he says guided his administation’s community development and livelihood projects, namely that they be assessed according as to whether they fit the four criteria of: non-violent, eco-friendly, sustainable and reaching to the poorest of the poor. I can’t help but think what a much more humane, secure and most importantly, cooler world it would be if only our current brand of world leaders would choose instead to follow such an enlightened and compassionate program.

I have also had another encounter with Rinpoche at Parliament of World Religions in Melbourne in 2009, where Rinpoche kindly offered a brief visit during lunch break to our peace education booth where we were working with young people inspired the example and work of various Nobel Peace Laureates, including His Holiness Dalai Lama, through the youth-led organization PeaceJam. At the Parliament of World Religions conference in Melbourne in 2009, Rinpoche presented along with representatives of other religious traditions on the topic of world religions value traditions’ potential contribution for addressing the world hunger problem. At the time, the world food crisis was still ongoing which had just happened in 2008, which saw world food prices increasing dramatically and cost-of-food-related protests, even riots, occuring in more than thirty countries. Meanwhile, the UN FAO had announced that the number of people in the world going hungry had gone past one billion. The food crisis continued through the Arab Spring protests where Tunisian vegetable seller Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest after he was prevented from pursuing his livelihood selling vegetables. Rinpoche also expressed his concern to hear that Iranian Nobel Peace Laureate Dr Shirin Ebadi had at the time had her house broken into in Iran and her Nobel Peace medal had been taken away by the authorities in Iran.

One of my fondest memories from the Bija Vidyapeeth is when, inspired by Rinpoche’s arrival on the farm, the participants of the Bija all somehow spontaneously began singing together the beautiful anti-war song ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone?’ which we had been learning the night before Rinpoche’s arrival. I would also like to include here my personal thanks as one of the students of Rinpoche for the ‘Gandhi and Globalisation’ course where I was much inspired then and since by Rinpoche’s teaching. I have this year been involved in organizing Dr Vandana Shiva’s speaking tour of Indonesia, ‘Our Seeds, Our Future’. As it is now nine years since I was on the Bija Vidyapeeth with Dr Shiva and Rinpoche, this shows the long-lasting inspiration of their teaching on the Bija Vidyapeeth.

Tibet Goes Organic
Weblink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rz481L5yPI

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