Varavoor is a long way from Thrissur but we’re told otherwise when we hitch an auto to the place. The rubber plantations, expansive and fenced away, leave a lasting impression. Our auto stops on a pukka road running in front of a shack by open fields. Varavoor is one of nine village panchayats in Wakdakkanchery Block that have become laboratories for a new project, the Green Army Initiative.
For 10 acres under cultivation, this field is sparsely peopled. Instead, two tractors hum through the mulch of the wet field. Hunched over in the quiet glass of the paddy are seven Green Army workers, in dark green uniforms, some with wide-rimmed hats. As we start down the bank of the field, a green-shirted farmer, disappearing beedi in hand , walks up to my friend. This is K.P. Moideen. He has a peeve and he thinks that my friend, a journalist with an established local newspaper, can help.
Mining and quarrying have been going on close to their farm, too close for comfort. My friend says that her newspaper is on it. Moideen is one of 10 farmers working on this piece of land in Varavoor. And he clearly has plenty to worry about. But the uniformed Green Army workers, of Kerala's labour bank, who are busy on his farm have made some progress in addressing two crucial issues: low productivity in paddy cultivation and a shortage of farm labour.
In spite of its impressive social indicators, Kerala’s agriculture has been anything but impressive. Between 1975 and 2007, the cultivation of paddy, Kerala’s staple diet, plunged from 8.84 lakh hectares to 3.52 lakh hectares. While nearly a quarter of the agricultural land in Wadakancherry block can potentially be cultivated with paddy, farming had remained sluggish. Worse still, productivity was expected to fall lower than 2 lakh hectares by 2011 if the trend continued.
Kerala had reason to panic. Due to expensive inputs, farmers lost their farm labour and the state, its farmers. “I couldn’t find people to do this job,” AT Moideen shruggedwhen asked why he approached the Green Army. Population increased but lands lay fallow and agriculture went dormant. Alarm bells rang and in 2007 the state government went into overdrive launching the ‘Food Security Action Scheme’. Keeping ambitions realistic, the Green Army took upon itself the task of cent percent paddy cultivation only in Wadakkanchery block.





