Need for Sustainable Agriculture with
Low Cost Technologies
According to
Swaminathan (1992) “Soils in India are often not only 'thirsty' but also 'hungry'.
Inputs are needed for output. It is estimated that 65% of the country’s cropped
area is organic by default as the small farmers have no choice but to farm
without chemical fertilizers and pesticides as they cannot afford these.
Written by Dr. Md. Nasim Ali
Indians have been cultivating
for more than 10,000 years using locally available resources in an eco-friendly
way. Evolution of the concept of farming has been best described in Kautilya’s Arthashatra,
Varahamihira’s Virat Samhita, Surapala’s Vrikshayurveda and Parasara’s
Krishi Parashara. The sage Parasar in ‘Krishi Parasar’ in the ___
BC stated that the “life of farmers is solely dependent upon
the microbes present in the soil.” Kautilya preached that a
king must learn agriculture. “The sage Janaka held the plough in
one hand and the sacred Vedas in the other. Our sages of old were farmers”
Swami Vivekananda (Ref Life of Swami Vivekananda by his Eastern and Western
disciples, publ. Advaita Ashrama,.Unfortunately, the perception changed
with the introduction of western education in pre-independent India and
agriculture profession came to be regarded as one of low dignity. Swami
Vivekananda rightly said, “But these days, no sooner do the village boys read a
book or two of English than they run to the cities. In the village they may
have plenty of land, but they do not feel satisfied. They want to enjoy
city-life and enter service.” (Ref ibid)Due to this lack of the feeling
of love for the land as towards one’s own mother as in the past and the sense
of pride and dignity towards farming as a profession, farmers started considering
land as merely a ‘unit of production’ rather than as a sacred mother-symbol.
Exploiting the land for more and
more production became their objective without any consideration for the health
of soil and environment.
With the advent of modern
inputs, namely, chemical fertilizers, pesticides etc. during post world war II
and to meet the demand for food production for the huge population from limited
land area, India too started using chemical inputs etc. during late fifties.
This was the advent of ‘Green
Revolution’ in India in 1968 with new chemical inputs and high yielding
varieties of crops. Undoubtedly, this was a great stride towards
self-sufficiency in food. But, the Green Revolution is now showing the second
generation problems like soil fatigue due to intensive cultivation and inadequate
and imbalanced fertilizer use, stagnation in yield of high yielding varieties,
continuous decrease in the input use efficiency, declining soil organic carbon
content, declining water table, increasing problems of soil salinity and
environmental degradation, etc. The productivity of major cereal crops like
wheat and rice is declining in many states. Albert Einstein in his message to
the people of India had rightly said in 1948, “India should not go for mechanized
farming. Soil in the U.S.A. has lost much of its fertility within a span of
just three hundred years, whereas India’s soil retains its fertility till
today, even though farming has been going on for last 10,000 years. Tractor’s
ploughing and use of fertilizers will bring loss of fertility, eventually
causing incalculable and irreparable harm to the country.”
According to Swaminathan (1992)
“Soils in India are often not only 'thirsty' but also 'hungry'. Inputs are
needed for output. Therefore, what we need is a reduction in the use of market
purchased chemical input and not of inputs per se. It is in this context that
integrated system of nutrient supply suitable for easy adoption includes crop
rotations, green manure, bio-fertilizers and bio dynamic systems that make significant
use of compost and humus, will help to improve soil structure and fertility”.
(Refer Report on the Inter ministerial
Task force on Integrated Plant
Nutrient Management Using City Compost dated 14 January 2003). Report of the working group
on ‘Organic and biodynamic farming’ for 10th five year plan published by
Planning Commission, Government of India in 2001 also supports the above
mentioned views and suggests organic and biodynamic farming principle and
practices to improve the health of soil, plants, animals, men and environment.
It is estimated that 65% of the
country’s cropped area is organic by default as the small farmers have no
choice but to farm without chemical fertilizers and pesticides as they cannot
afford these (Muthukumaran, 2006) (Refer Organic Agriculture and Food Industry:
trends, challenges and opportunities, K Muthukumaran, CAB Calling, Oct-Dec.
2006). Assuming the need of the organic farming and demand of organic
products in global market, the Department of Agriculture and Co-operation,
Government of India has set up a task force in May, 2000 on organic farming to
collect information on organic farming, assess the appropriate technologies of
such farming and setting up standards.
The Indian Government also
established the National Institute of organic farming in
October, _2003 in Ghaziabad,
Uttar Pradesh. Thirty years experiment on Organic Farming vs. Chemical Farming
in Rodale Institute of USA (published in 2011) also proves that organic farming
is better than chemical farming in respect of productivity, profitability, sustainability,
input use efficiency and energy consumption. Bio-fertilisers, biopesticides, enriched
organic manure; growth promoters etc. which are generally recommended and
produced commercially are also expensive and uncertain due to lack of adequate
standard quality control mechanism facility. In India, since more than 82 % farmers
belong to small and marginal farmers, and since 60% of net cultivated land fall
under rain fed farming and about 37 % of people live below poverty line,
purchase of these costly organic inputs also become difficult for the resource
poor farmers of India. Again, dependence on high cost external inputs itself is
against the principle of self-sufficiency and self-sustainability of an organic
farm.
Dr. Md. Nasim Ali
Assistant Professor,
RKMVU, F/C for IRDM, Narendrapur, Kolkata
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