What is the CNVF?

Last year, when I first moved to live in India from the UK, I was so shocked to find out that hundreds of thousands of farmers have committed suicide here over the last 10 years or so. Even today, we see reports of suicides in the local press. In fact, we're in a bit of a crisis zone, in the so-called 'suicide belt' in Yavatmal District, Maharashtra. Here, as in the rest of India, farmers have been getting into crippling debts, caused by trying to convert from traditional farming methods to more 'hi-tech', western approaches, started during India's Green Revolution. These days, farmers are bombarded with advertising that tells them all their problems will be solved if they simply grow the newest cash crops, such as BT Cotton, a genetically modified (GM) species.

BT Cotton Flower (SamB)

However, these crops are very expensive to grow - the seeds are expensive, the plants do not set seed so more has to be bought each year, the chemicals needed to grow them successfully are expensive - and to top it all, the price of these cash crop products is falling on the world market. Advertised as being 'pest resistant', the cash crops tend to be very badly hit by no end of pests, which leads to new plant varieties entering the market, more cash being demanded for seeds and chemicals... the cycle continues and continues, until the farmer, who already has very little, is so steeped in debt that he feels he has no other option but to end his life... and during this time, it's highly likely that he has caused extensive damage to his land too through the extensive use of dangerous and highly toxic pesticides. All in all, it's a very Violent farming revolution... violent for the farming community as people, and violent to the environment as soil impoverishment and 'death' often results.

I started the Centre for Non-Violent Farming along with my husband and a group of farmers within a village called Mohadi. This is where my husband grew up and where our family has farm land. Nearly every family in the village are farming families. It's their sole income in most cases. We wanted to help them out of their difficulties, as farming here is not easy.

The Centre's aims are as follows:

• Allow farmers to help themselves create a sustainable future for their families through farming in a non-violent manner.

• Facilitate networking of farmers with resources that will allow them to become informed and self-sufficient.

• Help farmers become more self-reliant and less dependent on external inputs for their farming.

• Restore and protect the natural environment surrounding farms to allow regeneration of ecosystem health and stability.

• Show farmers and villagers the benefits of caring for their environment and farming in a non-violent way.

• Spread what we have learnt to other villages so that they can also use these methods.

We hope to meet these aims by doing the following:

• Create a library of resources relating to sustainable, non-violent farming and land management methods, including organic methods, permaculture design and natural farming (Masanobu Fukuoka’s method).

• Translate and publish key texts in local languages, namely Marathi for the Mohadi farmers.

• Train farmers in research and observation skills.

• Provide workshops for farmers on non-violent farming methodologies.

• Facilitate travel to, and attendance of, workshops and training led by other sustainable farming organisations.

• Arrange visits to other projects and farms using non-violent farming methods.

• Convert 15 acres of agricultural land near to Yavatmal to a ‘non-violent farm’, which will act as a training resource for farmers, as well as a research centre for the CNVF.

• Provide opportunities for international exchange of knowledge and ideas through conferences and travel to other countries, including bringing farmers using non-violent farming methods to visit and work in Mohadi and other villages.

• Through publicity and articles, raise awareness, locally, nationally and internationally, of the Indian farming situation and the solutions non-violent farming can offer.