India Hopes to Expand Organic Agriculture

NEW DELHI - Jul 5/11 - SNS -- India sees itself as having significant, untapped potential to become one of the world's largest produces of organic foods, according to a recent background paper by the country's agriculture department.

The agriculture department background paper continues as follows:

India is bestowed with considerable potential for organic farming due to prevailing trend of integrated farming systems of crops and live stocks, high bio-diversity on account of diverse agro-climatic conditions and large number of small and marginal farmers. Besides, inherited tradition of low input agriculture in many parts of the country, particularly in hilly and rain-fed areas too, is an added advantage and augurs well for the farmers to shift to organic farming and tap the steadily growing domestic as well as overseas markets.

In rain-fed areas of the country, where usage of chemicals in agriculture is relatively low, there is vast scope for the promotion of organic farming. In the intensively cultivated irrigated areas too, where usage of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is considerably high, organic farming practices can help in arresting the decline of organic matter in soil. Application of organic manure and inter-cropping with legume crops can improve the soil quality and future agricultural productivity. In fact, future of sustainable development of agriculture, next to water, depends on preventing the decline in organic matter in soil. Organic farming has an important role to play in ensuring sustainability of agriculture.

Growth of India's Organic Farming

According to one estimate, about 1.4 million producers are engaged in organic farming in 35 million hectares of agricultural land worldwide. Almost two-thirds of the agricultural land under organic management is grass land. The cropped area constitutes 8.2 million hectares which is a quarter of total organic agricultural land. Asia, Latin America and Australasia are important producers and exporters of organic foods. Global sales of organic produce have reached $ 50.9 billion in 2008, doubling in value from $ 25 billion in 2003. Consumer demand for organic products is mainly from North America and Europe.

In India, from 42,000 hectare under organic certification in 2003-04, organic agriculture has grown many-fold. As on March 2010, more than 4.4 million hectare area was under organic certification in the country. For quality assurance, India has internationally acclaimed certification process in place for export, import and domestic markets. The National Programme on Organic Production (NPOP) notified under Foreign Trade Development and Regulation Act looks after the country’s export of certified organic produce. Certification of organic produce under NPOP has already been granted equivalence by European Union and Sweden.

During 2008-09, India produced about 18.78 lakh MTof certified organic products. Out of this, nearly 54,000 MTfood items worth Rs. 591 crore were exported. With more than 77,000 MTof organic cotton link production, India became the largest organic cotton grower in the world a year ago.

Indian organic exports include cereals, pulses, honey, tea, spices, oil seeds, fruits, vegetables, cotton fibre, cosmetics and body care products.

India's Government Support to Organic Farming

The Ministry of Agriculture is promoting organic farming in the country under these schemes: National Project on Organic Farming, National Horticulture Mission, Technology Mission for North East and Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana. The National Project on Organic Farming is being implemented since October 2004 through a National Centre of Organic Farming at Ghaziabad and six Regional Centres located at Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Hissar, Imphal, Jabalpur, and Nagpur. The project supports organic input production infrastructure, technical capacity building of stake holders, human resource development through training, statutory quality control of organic inputs, technology development and dissemination, market development and awareness. Two new innovative components were added in the project from the last financial year. These were:

1. Biological Soil Health Assessment: Traditionally, soil health is assessed through physio-chemical soil test and addressed mainly through chemical nutrient supplementation. It is now proposed to assess the soils also form biological health angle for making appropriate interventions to restore the fertility through organic and biological means.

2. PGS (Participatory Guarantee System) Certification: For quality assurance of organically grown crops so far the available system is third party certification which is not only cumbersome but also very costly. To address the issue, a new system is being introduced. In this method, farmers in a group collectively pledge for adopting organic farming, maintain necessary records and have inspection by each other. PGS will also serve as preparation to third party certification and farmers can easily switch over from PGS to the other form of certification.

Under the National Horticulture Mission and Technology Mission for North East, assistance is provided @ 50 per cent of cost subject to a maximum of Rs. 10,000 per hectare (upto 4 hectares per beneficiary) for organic horticulture cultivation. Assistance is also provided for setting up vermi-compost units @ 50 per cent of cost upto Rs.30,000 per beneficiary. Assistance of Rs.5 lakh is provided to a group of farmers covering an area of 50 hectares for organic farming certification.

Under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, States are being assisted for area expansion of organic food crops, capacity building of farmers and organic input production.

Besides the efforts of Central Government, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Nagaland, Sikkim, Mizoram and Uttarakhand have already drafted policies for promotion of organic farming. Nagaland, Sikkim, Mizoram and Uttarakhand have decided to go 100 per cent organic in due course of time.

Network Project on Organic Farming

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) took an initiative during 10th Plan in the form of Network Project on Organic Farming to study productivity, profitability, sustainability, quality and input use efficiency of different crops and cropping systems in different agro-ecological regions and to develop efficient crop and soil management options, and need-based cost effective new techniques for farm waste recycling.

The project came into existence in 2004 with main centre at project directorate for farming systems research, Modipuram. It comprises 13 cooperating centres spread over 12 States. Based on results of past years, several significant achievements have been made and good yields/profits have been achieved in many crops at some of the centres under the organic farming system. Since these results are only indicative and need a mid-term and long-term validation, their response to new environment would take some time to stabilise. The ICAR has continued the project during 11th Plan also with 13 centres and the budgetary provision of Rs.5.34

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