Farmers First : the Socio-Economic Consideration of Organic Agriculture

Abstract

Borrowing Chambers' term, the central idea posed by this paper is that farmers should be the first consideration in any agriculture system. The conventional farming (green revolution and industrial agricultural) system has marginalized farmers and results in destruction of bio-physics impacts (soil degradation, loss of genetic diversity of plants and animals, pollution of the soil and water by chemicals) and deterioration of farmers' socioeconomics livelihoods (poverty and landlessness, food safety, health hazard, decreasing self-reliance due to dependence on external inputs). The alternative system of sustainable agriculture which encompass a range of philosophies such as conservation-based agriculture, ecological agriculturt., low-external-input agriculture, diversified farming, organic farming - has the potentiality to promote self-reliance dan solidarity among farmers. However, it is an ecological construct, deals mainly with bio-physical aspects whereas socio-economic aspects, economic viability and cultural appropriateness, should be properly contextualized so not to draw away from the poor peasant and farm workers who are supposed to be the object of development efforts in the first place. As OA gets into the mainstream of agcriculture system, we should pay attention to (1) concept of OA is sometimes reduced to a question of techniques or proper management of resources, and (2) tendency of OA agrobusiness to monopalize chain of production to marketing (3) over-regulating of government or certification agencies. This will be a continuance of farmers' Iack of self-reliance and welfare.