Actual state of organic agriculture in india and other countries

[OrganicABC]

ACTUAL STATE OF ORGANIC AGRICULTURE IN INDIA AND OTHER COUNTRIES
Dr.Ashok K. Panigrahi and Mrs.Kusum Misra

Organic agriculture is about more than just growing crops without using either chemical fertilizers and synthetic pesticides, rather it a holistic approach to the very system of farming that restores, maintains and enhances economical sustainability and ecological balance generating non toxic, healthy and tasty food or medicine or dye with natural fragrance and colour. In today’s world most organic growers since believe in biodiversity, they avoid GM varieties, whether crops or seeds or plants or animals. They use no chemical either for soil fertility or for pest control, no chemical either for their growth or for their protection except the medicines that too only when the situation is very bad and beyond control.

OVERVIEW
Organic agriculture is currently being practiced in more than 100 countries the world over. The ill effects of agrochemicals used for last several decades have changed the minds of consumers in different countries who are now buying or willing to bye organic food stuffs with high premium. Policy makers are now promoting organic agriculture for several different reasons such as soil health, sustaining rural economy and creating better environment. The global organic area is estimated at 26 million hectare with 61 standards and 364 certification bodies.The world organic market is estimated at 26 billion US $. The certified organic area in India is estimated at 2.5 million hectare but non-certified area is much more.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Organic agriculture is being practiced in India since the beginning of agriculture in this country and it continued as such till Green Revolution was introduced in this country in the mid sixties.There is a brief mention of organic agriculture in ancient literatures like the Rigveda, Ramayana, Mahabharata and Kautilya Arthshastra etc.Sir Albert Howard was the first industrial agriculturist who was brought in to India by the British to teach the Indian farmers the use of agrochemicals but he ended up in learning the organic agriculture from Indian farmers, developed the Indore process and went on to establish the symbiotic fungal bridge between the humus in the soil and the sap of the plants through the mycorrhizal associations. He wrote in his, An Agricultural Testament, “Since industrial revolution, agriculture has become unbalance, the land is in revolt, diseases of all kinds are on the increase, the nature is removing the worn out soil by erosion.”

AGRICULTURE IN ANCIENT INDIA
1. Oldest practice 10,000 years ago dating back to Neolithic age by ancient
civilization like Mesopotamia, Hwang Ho basin etc.
2. Ramayana All dead things returned to earth that in nourish soil and life 3. Mahabharata 5500 B.C., Kamadhenu – the sacred cow, had role in Agriculture also

4. Kautilya Arthshastra 300 B.C., use of several manures made of the excreta of domesticated animals and oil cake

5. Brihad Sanhita Methods of choosing manures for crops and manuring

6. Rigveda 2,500-1,500 B.C., green manure, use of dung of goat, sheep,
cow etc.

LARGE SCALE USE OF CHEMICALS IN AGRICULTURE IN INDIA
US Noble laureate Norman Borlaug, the creator of the famous dwarf wheat variety in Mexico, visited India in 1957. In a press conference he said, “Were I been a member of the Indian Parliament I would leapt from my seat every fifteen minutes and yell at the top of my voice, fertilizers, give farmers more fertilizers.” The fact is that, between the fifties and sixties, in the independent India, there was a gap between the demand and production of food. To meet this, the Indian planners under the influence of the US institutions like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the US food specialist Norman Borlaug, conceived the idea of paradigm shift in agriculture, from natural to chemical, from natives to high brids and high yields, the seeds of which gained popularity under the global brand name of “miracle seeds,” having the ability to soak up agrochemicals developed at that point of time. This was a global phenomenon and it helped in the global increases in food out puts instantly. To day the world food grain production is estimated at 2100 million tones and it is mostly based on use of agrochemicals, artificial chemical fertilizers and synthetic pesticides. However, the impacts of these agro chemicals, the artificial chemical fertilizers and synthetic pesticides are well observable. No data have been published by any the Indian agency like the US Environment Protection Agency (USEPA). The USEPA revealed in 1991 that the projected estimate of methane emission from the Indian paddy fields amounted to 37.8 metric tones per year, thus accusing Indian paddy cultivators in adding to the global green house gas accumulation as methane is also considered as a green house gas. Consequently in India more emphasis was attached to shift to non conventional agriculture and keep paddy cultivation limited to 47% of total arable land (National Agriculture Policy, 2000). Use of artificial chemical fertilizers especially N- fertilizers always invite the agricultural pests leading to applications of pesticides, especially synthetic pesticides and both of these pollute the environment substantially.

The global fertilizer use (in Kg/ha)
Korea - 357 kg Japan - 247 kg
Netherlands – 172 kg Bangladesh - 158 kg
Germany - 153 kg India - 89 kg
The sinister logic of recommendation of the use of chemical fertilizers:

Plant requires 17 essential nutrients divided under two groups:
1. Macro nutrients- those required by plants in large amounts and
2. Micro nutrients-those required by plants in small amounts
Regardless of the sources, plants absorb all nutrients in inorganic forms only. The 3 Macro or major primary nutrients are absorbed as under -
Nitrogen (N) as Ammonia, Nitrate and Nitrite
Phosphorus (P) as P2O5 (available phosphorus)
Potash (K) as K2O (available potash)
The 3 macro secondary nutrients include such substances as Calcium (Ca), Magnesium (Mg) and Sulphur (S) which are naturally available in the soil and manures.

Micronutrients or minor plant nutrients are in fact trace elements as Iron(Fe), Manganese(Mn), Zinc(Zn), Copper(Cu), Boron(B), Molybdenum(Mo) and Cobalt(Co) and like the secondary macro nutrients, are supposed to be available in the soil and manures. Although there is nothing organic in the nutrient absorption by plants but plant up take is surely influenced by the source of origin of the said nutrients, it is better if it is from the organic source, as the availability is modest and release is delayed but prolonged and the nutrients do not influence each other’s up take. In the chemical process, excessive applications of nitrogenous fertilizers prevent phosphorus and potash up take by plants.

State of facts
Intensive farming, said to be required to meet the increasing food demand of the growing population, exhaust natural soil fertility and distort soil’s natural balance.It is suggested, inorganics have to be selectively added to the soil to maintain the required plant nutrition. But their ills are never assessed nor taken care of. In the green revolution era throughout the world, the crop plants were basically protected through the use of biocides, pesticides, fungicides etc.and its impacts Use of synthetic pesticide (in kg/ ha.) in USA, Japan, Korea, China and India are 1.5, 10.8, 6.6, 2.25 and 0.38 kg, respectively. The uses of synthetic pesticides in the last few decades have become one of the essential inputs of modern farming, but consequences are evidently disastrous.