Mission

Mission

Act Naturally is a international non-profit who promotes non-violent biodiverse, and independent agricultural practices to solve problems in health and food security. We partner with farmers, farming groups, communities, activists, volunteers and other N.G.O’s to transition farmers from input intensive industrial agriculture to organic, region specific, agricultural practices that combine native wisdom with regenerative remediation techniques.

We started as a small volunteer based organization  whose mission was and still is to increase public awareness in India about the benefits of organic agriculture and biodiverse farming practices, nutritional appropriation by industry and agrobusiness, and issues in national food security.

We are emphatically against genetically modified organisms, crops, expriments and animals and any attempt to patent nature, or transform nature into intellectual property.

We run an information portal at: www.actnaturallyblog.wordpress.com that publishes articles, videos, and photo galleries from the front line – a farmers field! Here we present information libraries with past and present legislation, links to other N.G.Os, blogs, organic movements, organic education, and related news items. After taking an international survey of non-governmental organizations, non-profits, farming groups, and activists solely focused on the issue of how trade liberalization and development has affected India’s farmers since 1991, Act Naturally discovered that there is a gap in awareness, organizing and funding support for grassroots efforts;

1. Already established in India, and
2. In bridging the international community already concerned with the issue of genetically modified crops, displacement of tribal adivasi peoples, and farmer suicides, to practical on-the-ground relief efforts, where they can vote their conscious by donation.

These two factors, form the backbone of Act Naturally, it’s professional partnerships and it’s relationships with concerned peoples all over the world. Now, we have created a a program to bridge the caring hearts of our supporters to the village farmers and their families who need our support. It is not often in our lives that we get an opportunity to join such a fundamental struggle – fighting for the biodiversity of the planet, our food supply and lending support to the very hands that work the earth! Act Naturally knows that we have a monumental task ahead of us, but we take comfort in the compassion and commitment of our members, donors, and people just like you!

Act Naturally has Six Goals

 To increase public awareness of organic agriculture and biodiverse farming practices, nutritional appropriation by industry, and issues in national food security. As part of this goal we are producing a documentary called Kunrati Karma in 2012. This also includes promoting  urban farming, community gardens and seed saving for the urban dweller through our Grow Your Own India initiative.

 To work with local farmers, volunteers and national and local governments or panchayats to facilitate the transition to sustainable organic agriculture and seed saving by providing workshops, transitionary funding and volunteers

 Organize campaigning to shift government policy toward national promotion of organic agriculture. With national support we feel farmers will be able to secure additional financial and technical resources to reduce hardships caused by reduction in yield as they transition to organics. They will also have support for greater market access.

 Facilitate farming exchange cultural tours that place volunteers in participating farming communities to work during critical parts of the year.  Participants will enjoy homestays, cultural activities, guest lecturers, herb walks, treks, and region specific foods. Money made from these tours will support the Khet Jyoti Fund and operational expenses.

 Create linkages between the farmer and the consumer by creating organic markets through increasing public awareness campaigns and launching our branded volunteer and locally managed “organic” certification called Village Republic Organics. Our standards build from existing USDA, but are enforced at the local level without a cost to the farmer. Products branded with this label will be sold online, at farmers markets and in Indian-owned shops. A percentage of the profits will directly benefit the village farmers who grew and produced the product.

 Provide debt relief to the farmsers in the hardest hit regions of India’s suicide belt, enrolling them in a four year remediation program from chemical to organic regenerative sustainable agriculture. Once the principal balance is paid down to an acceptable level that will not cause further hardship or the debt is completely paid off, Act Naturally will work with the fartmer to transition to organic farming by providing seed stock for the following year, training and additional infrastructure needs.

groundwater, fallow soils, and low prices for their crops. The problem is so serious that nearly 200,000 farmers have committed suicide over reoccurring debts sometimes totally no more than $150 U.S. dollars. Entire villages, like Malwa in India’s cotton belt or Bhutal Khor in Punjab were put up for sale do to the inability of all the villagers to pay escalating debts taken out to cover costs of pesticides, special seeds, water, fertilizers and petrol, using their land as collateral. Rising input costs coincide with cutbacks in subsidies for these inputs while subsidized competition from the U.S. which drive down prices for their food. These agricultural refugees are forced to leave their ancestral land for menial jobs in India’s overpopulated polluted cities to live on less than $2.00 a day or die of malnutrition.

Governmental policies that favor corporate farming and the biotech industry, along with the Agro-business industry itself, are divesting the poor people of their only economic security – a meagre land holding. Manwhile agribusiness giants like Monsanto, who sale genetically modified seeds through heir Indian subsidiary Maharasthra Hybrid Seeds Co Ltd. (Mahyco) have seen record sales, $2.1 billion on a revenue of $11.7 billion for fiscal 2009 year according to Forbes magazine. Their profits have increased 18% for he last five years! Pushing small-scale farmers to the brink of catastrophe is big business. When we consider these issues, we must also keep in mind that these small-scale farmers have been a living shield, staving off the ramped spread of genetically modified foods in the largest market in the world by burning field trials of genetically modified crops, meeting en mass to protest under gunfire, and forming Gandhian marches  (yatra) that span the continent with righteous indignation. Their struggle has stalled the progression of genetically modified foods, and they need our support! The loss of not only India’s biodiversity, but the biodiversity of the world with genetic contamination is at stake. As activist, physicist and eco-feminist Vandana Shiva says,

 ”Genetic modification  is unscrambling the tree of life itself.”

They (Dow Agro Science, Monsanto and Bayer Crop Science) are creating seeds adjusted for profits in the boardroom and not, for the worlds nutritional concern. The human right for food is an inalienable right, to be traded at the farmers market and not on the stock market.

“When an entire village is put up for sale, it is not merely an uprooting of families from a place they had called their ancestral home, it is fundamental break with the “sacrosanct village community” or the Village Republic as Gandhi called them, that has been the backbone of India’s social-economic structure for thousands of years. For the first time in her history, villages are no longer reproducing themselves as they have for milinea They are breaking apart, going up for sale, and being co opted by foreign interests invited in by neo-liberal trade reforms forced on India by the International Monetary Fund in1991.

With them goes a living link to our humanity, a humanity centered around nature, and not corporations, to supply our nutritional bounty. A humanity that predates the entry of consumerism into the human psyche, that has something to teach us about managing todays complexities, if we will just listen. And a humanity who by their very steadfastness still hold the seeds tempered by natural evolution from thousands of years of climate change on this planet. If you are as passionate about these issues, as we are, I’m sure you are asking yourself, “How can I help?” or maybe your thinking, “I want to help but they are on the other side of the world!” Act Naturally makes it easy to show your support.

We have created the Khet Jyoti Fund  as a way for our donors to link their generous contributions directly to practical on the ground solutions. The Khet Jyoti Fund or Farm Light Fund was given life by generous donors like yourself. It structures debt relief packages for struggling farmers in India’s suicide belt. As reported in PRAXIS The Fletcher Journal of Human Security, by Mallika Kaur in her article entitled, The Paradox of Indias Bread Basket: Farmer Suicides in Punjab, reveal:

“During the Green Revolution, production was improved with the use of modified seeds that increased yield only when combined with expensive chemical fertilizers and irrigation. Unable to afford sufficient amounts of these expensive inputs, small farmers found their holdings becoming progressively less profitable. Meanwhile, grain prices  remained comparatively low even as input costs increased. Now, three decades later, the small and marginal farmers of Punjab, in trying to pursue environmentally and economically unsustainable agrarian practices, are accumulating high debt while lacking alternative sources of income.”

Most rural farmers do not have official documentation for their land.  Consequently, they do not qualify for banks loans because of a lack of proovable collateral. They choose to deal with private money lenders, though private money lending is officially illegal. When a farmer can no longer pay their debt, their options are bleak. Often they commit suicide or have their family land seized by debt collectors. The debt relief packages provided by the Indian government have restrictions that disqualify many people in urgent situations. Act Naturally will provide debt relief regardless of  credit qualification, based on demonstrated need. After the debts are cleared, we sponsor the farmer on four-year  transition to organic agriculture, providing non-gmo seed stock, organic fertilizers, additional remediation measures and inputs, education, and infrastructure for alternate income generation. Our goal is to disconnect the farmer from the expensive seasonal input cycle, by making him/her self sufficient, saving seed, and a successful profitable organic example in their community.

A donation of $100 can mean the difference between a family losing their ancestral land, feeding their family or making ends meet for one more month! In these situations, so little, can mean so much!

With hope and determination,
Inshallah,

Lua Cheia
Executive Director
Act Naturally
www.actnaturally.org
info@actnaturally.org