KADAPA, INDIA, November 2, 2022 (Al Jazeera): Three years ago, Venkat Shobha Rani quit her job as a primary school teacher to help her husband tend their three-acre farm, part of a growing number of rural folk in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh who are moving to organic farming. Shobha is now one of several hundred Andhra Pradesh small farmers who are part of a government-run, community-managed natural farming program launched in 2015 as an alternative to burdening farmers with soaring fertilizer and chemical costs. The initiative is arguably unique in India. Input costs for farmers are rising even as their incomes fall, pushing Andhra Pradesh, like many other Indian states, into a farm crisis. The project to help farmers go organic is seen as a crucial experiment, and other states are watching it closely. The program has spread across the state, aiming to sign up one million farmers this year to practice either partially or fully organic farming.
In mid-August, Shobha enrolled with a state agency to supply organic Bengal gram (chickpeas) again to the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam temple, dedicated to her favorite Deity, Lord Venkateswara, a form of Vishnu. Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD), likely the country’s richest temple, needs a steady supply of chickpea flour for its laddus, the large round sweets produced in the temple’s huge kitchen. The temple makes and sells tens of thousands of laddus to pilgrims and devotees each day, as they are considered a vessel for Lord Venkateswara’s blessings. Other inputs include ghee, cashews, raisins, cardamom and jaggery. Most of these, too, are now sourced locally from organic farmers. Across the state, new organic farmers like Shobha are being tapped to supply their crops, including chickpeas and rice, for TTD, in what’s being hailed as an “extraordinary decision” of the temple trust. The temple, which receives 60,000 to 70,000 devotees every day, decided to go fully organic in May, inspired by a devotee’s donation of chemical-free rice to the temple in 2021. Eleven more temples in Andhra Pradesh have followed in its footsteps. Together, they have placed an order for 25,000 tons of certified organic produce for the 2022-2023 farming season.
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https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/11/2/one-of-indias-richest-temples-goes-organic-with-its-laddus