Story of Samatbhai
Samatbhai Jada, with his wife Gauriben, was one of the pioneers of organic cotton farming. He grows cotton in Dharai village of Gujarat.
He started farming in 2002, using conventional farming methods, using a lot of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In 2001-2002, there was a massive bollworm infestation and the use of pesticides was increased. Many cotton farmers were badly affected by chemicals including his brother, who fainted and had to be hospitalized. This was a turning point in his life. He started questioning the widespread use of such chemicals which are harmful to human. He then decided that he will not use pesticides and chemicals at the cost of their lives. This would mean that production would be less but he was ready to face that risk. From 2002-2003 he started converting his farm into organic. He started with other crops and stopped growing cotton for a while. This was a big step as cotton was the staple and the region is known for its cotton. He experimented with the land, slowly converting to organic with natural inputs.
From 2006, he went back to growing cotton. There were 6-7 types of cotton seeds that were available in the market. In the next few years, he realised that only GM seeds were available in the market. He could not find a single Non Bt cotton plant. In his quest to stay true to growing organic, he found JATAN (Gujarat based NGO working for betterment of farmers).
With the support of Jatan, he found GM free seeds from the Agricultural University and some farmers. In 2011 with technical support from Jatan, he tested each plant and found that 30% of the crop was Bt. He removed these and continued sowing native seeds with organic farming practices. By 2016 he started producing good quality seeds.
The next step was selling and there was no separate market for organic cotton. We collaborated with Gondal Sanstha and started enabling the process of organic cotton hand spun hand woven fabrics.
Samatbhai is happy saying that farmers are now benefited by this initiative and get 30% more than the market price.
