AGRICULTURE-ASIA: Boom in Organic Farming Has Roots in Crises

By A. D. McKenzie Reprint | | Print |

A D McKenzie

SINGAPORE, May 25 2004 (IPS) - It is a swelteringly hot day on the farm, and as Evelyn Eng-Lim harvests vegetables such as ‘kailan’ or Chinese broccoli and okra, perspiration streams down her face.

”Sometimes we get local volunteers who come to help us but they don’t last long because Singaporeans can’t do without aircon,” Eng-Lim chuckles. ”Nowadays when they turn up, I just tell them it’s not as romantic as it looks.”

Eng-Lim, a slim 58-year-old former chemist, is an organic farmer, one of a growing breed across Asia. She and her counterparts are catering to a rising demand for produce that has been grown by natural means – that is, not genetically modified or treated with synthetic chemical fertilisers and pesticides.

Organic farming, according to the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), has increased by as much as 50 percent over the last two years in some Asian countries.

IFOAM will hold its sixth Asia conference in Korea in September, titled ‘Safe Food and Benign Environment for the Asian Community’, and the organisation expects hundreds to attend.

All this is a significant change from just three years ago, when the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific did its first ”systematic assessment of organic activities in Asia” and found that compared to other regions, Asia ”was lagging behind in the development of the organic agriculture sector”.

The experts warned then that the region was ”missing out on economic and environmental opportunities especially for the millions of small farmers”. Internationally, the organic market was worth some 25 billion U.S. dollars in 2001, says IFOAM.

But a series of crises since then has benefited organic farming in Asia, even while other sectors might have suffered.

Last year, for instance, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) caused people to look at ways to boost their immune system, and a healthier diet was among the options.

”We always get more people interested in buying our vegetables when there are events like SARS, bird flu, or the discovery of toxicity in conventionally grown produce,” says Eng-Lim, whose farm Green Circle received increased orders during the SARS epidemic. ”Outside of that, it’s a gradually growing area.”

Eng-Lim’s two-hectare farm is located in a ”remote” corner of Singapore, far from the island state’s renowned shopping malls.

Butterflies, birds and huge black bumblebees share space with the mosquitoes and fruit flies. The earth is wet and sticky after recent rains, the air smells of compost, and overhead the sun beats relentlessly down.

As her five workers, mostly from Eastern Malaysia, help to pick and pack limes, peppers, lettuce and other produce, a military jet screams overhead, disturbing the quiet.

This is a farming area, but a few kilometres away is a military camp with forbidding signs of ‘Danger. Keep out’. The two co-exist, each minding their own business. The government in fact leases land to farmers at reduced rates, but apart from that, organic farmers get no special incentives.

In Thailand, meanwhile, the government has been promoting ”environmentally friendly” agriculture over the past three years, providing subsidies and technical assistance to selected regions. The move is an effort to boost agricultural exports as well as to decrease the amount of chemical pesticides used on farms.

The Thai government has also introduced national standards for organic farming and food production, along with a certification system and a logo for organic products.

According to Weena Krutngoen of the Organic Agriculture Certification Thailand (ACT) office, the number of certified organic farms in the country has doubled since 2002, to more than 700. In addition, there are thousands of other farms practising some form of alternative agriculture.

Thai farmers, and those in other countries, not only supply produce to organic stores, but many have tapped into the tourism and restaurant sectors to boost the profile of local organic foods and other products.

In the Philippines, Sonya Garcia runs an organic restaurant using her own vegetables and herbs. Nestled in the hills of Tagaytay, south of Manila, the restaurant attracts residents from the capital as well as overseas visitors, and Garcia also sells products such as honey, rose water, teas and a wide range of herbs.

Last year, she expanded her business to include a bed-and-breakfast guesthouse on her one-hectare property, and she now employs 40 people.

”Being in Sonya’s restaurant is like sitting in a special greenhouse,” one patron says. ”And the food is excellent. When you eat like this it’s easy to be a vegetarian.”

Indeed, vegetarianism and organic farming often go hand-in-hand.

The recent epidemic of bird flu in Asia, with the widespread images of chickens being slaughtered or even buried alive, have caused many people to turn to a ”more vegetarian” diet, Singaporean farmer Eng-Lim says. She herself is vegetarian and started the farm as a way of putting her beliefs into practice.

In the mid-1990s, she began by planting vegetables in her own garden and selling them to a friend who had opened an organic shop, she recalls. At around the same time, a scare about pesticides on vegetables imported from a neighbouring country made local consumers more interested in organic produce, and Eng-Lim decided to look into ways of starting her own farm.

She contacted Singapore’s Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), and was informed that she could apply for land to begin the farm. But as there had been cases of people using such rented land for other purposes besides farming, the rules were being tightened, and Eng-Lim had to wait 18 months before her bid was accepted.

She began Green Circle Eco-Farm in 1999, and her husband Lim Tian Soo subsequently quit his job as a financial consultant to join her.

They have had many ”adventures” along the way, including finding a huge python among their chickens, waking up to discover that a storm had blown away their coops and newly bought chicks, and seeing 60 percent of their guavas eaten by fruit flies and other pests.

But, says Eng-Lim, the rewards have made it worthwhile. Besides gaining an increasing number of clients, she says that she has seen the soil on her farm improve as a result of using natural compost. Buyers of her produce include cancer patients who appreciate being able to obtain organic produce.

”You make a choice to have this kind of lifestyle, and you have to believe in it,” Eng-Lim says. ”Organic farming is labour-intensive, and so the prices are higher, it is true. But the payback is great for everyone. You can eat the peel of your sweet potato and get more nutrients instead of having to throw it away because of pesticides.”