Natural option

Organic and natural farming approaches are not only profitable and sustainable, but also productive

- AMIT KHURANA, MOHAMMAD ABDUL HALIM AND ABHAY KUMAR SINGH

IT'S HARD to fathom that just 2.7 per cent, or 3.8 million hectares (ha) of the country's net-sown area is under organic and natural farming despite despite two decades of government efforts to upscale the practices. The Union government passed its first policy on organic farming in 2005, and introduced the flagship Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) in 2015-16. Recently in December 2021, highlighting the ill-effects of chemical-based farming, Prime Minister Narendra Narendra Modi also appealed to make natural farming a mass movement in the country. Some of the prime reasons that hinder the shift is a lack of conviction among policymakers; limited consensus among the scientific community in favour of organic and natural farming; and the tendency to evaluate the non-chemical agricultural practices only on the basis of yield.

The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a Delhi-based nonprofit, has recently consolidated long-term evidence on holistic benefits of organic and natural farming by analysing the results of 89 scientific studies, conducted across the country over the last decade, and the findings of government's own All India Network Project on Organic Farming (AI-NPOF) going on in 16 states since 2004. CSE researchers analysed four key aspects: crop yield, cost of cultivation, income and livelihood, soil health and environment, and food quality. In the report, Evidence (2004-20) on Holistic Benefits of Organic and Natural Farming in India, they state that organic and natural farming are not only profitable and sustainable but also productive when compared with the chemical-dependent inorganic farming.

ON YIELD