Making small-scale farming work—the organic alternative

In the previous post, we discussed an alternative to scaling up agriculture, by supporting farmers into producing cash crops. We discussed that shifting to cash crops requires overcoming three problems—finance, skill and stable demand—that farmers themselves usually cannot provide. Hence, the need for a micro-oriented approach—involving conscious encouragement and support to maintain smaller-scale production and allow farmers to earn a livelihood even as they remained small in scale.

Are there other ways to make small-scale farming more viable?

Another way we’ve seen does not rely on shifting from grain to cash crops, but instead by producing organically-produced grain.

My friend Dr. Joel Moore—he’s a political economist who researches Thai politics. He speaks a mean Thai. One year, we decided to learn from farmers in Northeastern Thailand, in a region called Isan. Isan is a poor region of Thailand, but it is also the ‘rice basket’ of Thailand, producing a large portion of Thailand’s famous Jasmine rice.

Decades ago, the Thai government, with the support of industry, encouraged farmers throughout Thailand to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Yields went up, along with incomes—at least for a time. But the use of chemical inputs hurt farmers’ health as well as the natural environment. What is more, farmers experienced diminishing yields as the chemicals eroded the quality of land and degraded the water. Meanwhile, Isani farmers gradually lost their traditional knowledge of how to grow rice organically.

It turns out that chemical inputs tend to increase production. But because of the premium associated with organic production, the increase in price more than compensates for the loss in output. That creates a great material incentive for farmers to shift to organic production—on top of the health and environmental benefits they can enjoy.

But while the benefits of shifting to organic production are high, the costs are also high.

Shifting to organic production faces the same three barriers that shifting to cash crops entail—and more. For farmers to shift to organic production not only requires financing, know-how, and a stable market—but often more of each of these three. And other barriers that are more unique to organic production must also be surmounted.

To make organic production viable usually requires farmers to certify their production as organic, which means receiving the endorsement of international certification organizations such as the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM). IFOAM is literally half a world away from rural Thailand. The organization rightly requires that farmers meet exacting technical standards—these are difficult to learn and maintain. The know-how required to shift to organic production is as high or even higher than that required to learn to shift to cash crops.

And organic production is also costly—even the cost of applying for certification is high. But organic production requires new inputs, new practices, new seeds—and each of these can be pricey, especially for a poor Isani household, both in start-up costs as well as in on-going expenses. 

Further increasing the challenge, farmers must cooperate to go organic. It is impossible for an individual small-scale farmer to receive organic certification alone—farmers invariably must do so as groups. And that means cooperating with neighbors—convincing others that producing organic will pay off over the long-term, and that working together to qualify for certification. The entire group is certified together, not as individuals but as a group. If one farmer falls short, the entire group—which had struggled to become certified in the first place—can lose that certification.

Imagine a group of Isani farmers who has a neighbor that refuses to join. That neighbors use of chemicals can corrupt the organic group’s production. Or imagine a member of the group that figures they can increase production by secretly using chemical fertilizer, thus increasing their own yields while still being falsely certified as organic. Once caught, that cheater can cause the entire group to be decertified. Or imagine such a farmer isn’t actually cheating, but somehow didn’t understand all of IFOAM’s primary rules, or accidentally made a serious violation of thsoe rules. iFOAM has a warning system. But often the lack of strict cooperation can cause the entire group to be decertified. Farmer groups are expected to monitor themselves, an understandably difficult task.

And even in the best of circumstances, farmers must strictly practice organic farming for between two and four years before they can be certified, as chemicals applied in past years gradually lose their potency and are washed away. Once the chemicals are out of the soil and water, only then can farmers—even those who have been producing using organic practices for years—can be certified. During those transitions years, our Isani farmers’ yields will decrease, but the farmers would not yet enjoy the price premium that comes with certification.

And once these Isani farmers become certified, they have to sell their product—and the most lucrative markets tend to be far away. Somehow, Isani farmers must connect to distribution systems that will shuttle their organic rice to distant markets in Bangkok, Singapore, Europe or North America.

Thus, the challenges related to finance, know-how and stable market that farmers who shift to cash crops face are often more arduous for farmers who shift to organic production. And shifting to organic production often entails surmounting additional challenges—convincing and training neighboring farmers, achieving and maintaining long-term cooperation, receiving certification by following a dizzying array of rules written with technical exactitude, and accessing distribution challenges that reach far-flung markets.

Organic production comes with high rewards, and not just for income, but for health and environmental sustainability. At the same time, successfully shifting to organic production requires overcoming high barriers—and plenty of them.

And we discovered that, like producers of cash crops, successful farmer groups—those which became certified and successfully market their products to domestic and international markets—invariably require outside help. These also required outside actors—non-government organizations, local governments, previously successful farmer groups, and even local religious leaders who urge organic production—are vital to success.

Here, too we see that the micro-oriented approach is an approach—one that requires proactive support by government and civic actors, in addition to committed farmers. Successfully doing so allows farmers to remain actively engaged in small-scale farming using appropriate technologies in ways that allowed these farmers to make a decent livelihood.

(And to whet your appetite a bit, I wanted to foreshadow an interesting element of Isani farmers. We later discovered that organic farmers in other areas of the world experienced a discouraging phenomenon. After shifting to organic production, such farmers felt pressure from distributors and others to shift their production in a way that entailed losing the essence of organic production. Under this process of “conventionalization,” the process through which agribusiness forces the industrialization of organic production (cf. Buck, Getz, & Guthman, 1997; Guthman, 2004) or a similar problem wherein standards organizations are co-opted into adopting the interests of agribusiness. Why were Isani organic rice farmers able to resist these forces whereas other, often better-resourced organic farmers were not? That will have to be another post.)