Why in news?

• Sikkim has won the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Future Policy Gold Award for its achievement in becoming the world’s first totally organic agriculture state.

Objective of Future Policy Gold Award:

• The Future Policy Award celebrates policies that create better living conditions for current and future generations.
•  The aim of the award is to raise global awareness for these exemplary policies and speed up policy action towards just, sustainable and peaceful societies.
•  The Future Policy Award is the first award that celebrates policies rather than people on an international level.

Award for Sikkim:

•  The award recognizes the world’s best laws and policies promoting agroecology.
•  Sikkim beat out 51 other nominees from around the world for the award.
•   Brazil, Denmark, Quito and Ecuador shared the Silver award.
•  Sikkim is the first organic state in the world and all of its farmland is certified organic, reads the award announcement.
•  The state has totally banned the sale and use of chemical pesticides.
•  The award is co-organised with the FAO by The World Future Council (WFC) and IFOAM – Organics International.

Sikkim Organic Mission:

• Starting with a political commitment to support organic farming in 2003, Sikkim designed in 2010 the Sikkim Organic Mission.
• It is a road map that clearly detailed all the measures necessary to achieve the target of becoming a fully organic state by 2015.
• At the time, officials reasoned that per hectare consumption of fertilizers in Sikkim was already among the lowest in the country (at 5.8 kg per hectare).
•   Farmers had also traditionally never used chemicals in the cultivation of cardamom, one of Sikkim’s main cash crops.
•  From 2003, the state began reducing the subsidy on chemical pesticides and fertilizers by 10 per cent every year and banned them completely in 2014.
• Their sale and use was made punishable by law with an imprisonment of up to three months or a fine of up to Rs 1 lakh or both