1 Green Revolution: Context and Achievements
Year | Procurement | Buffer stock |
---|---|---|
1972–73 | 7.51 | 2.60 |
1982–83 | 14.85 | 11.10 |
1992–93 | 17.16 | 12.67 |
2002–03 | 38.03 | 32.81 |
2012–13 | 72.19 | 59.76 |
2017–18 | 68.20 | 43.31 |
Period | Net sown area (‘000 ha) | Gross cropped area (‘000 ha) | NSA/TGA (%) | GCA/TGA (%) | GCA/NSA (cropping intensity) (%) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1950–51 to 1954–55 | 123,248 | 137,874 | 37 | 42 | 112 |
1955–56 to 1959–60 | 130,770 | 149,418 | 40 | 45 | 114 |
1960–61 to 1964–65 | 135,908 | 156,387 | 41 | 48 | 115 |
1965–66 to 1969–70 | 137,863 | 159,632 | 42 | 49 | 116 |
1970–71 to 1974–75 | 139,587 | 165,438 | 42 | 50 | 119 |
1975–76 to 1979–80 | 140,993 | 171,051 | 43 | 52 | 121 |
1980–81 to 1984–85 | 141,467 | 175,604 | 43 | 53 | 124 |
1985–86 to 1989–90 | 139,759 | 178,031 | 43 | 54 | 127 |
1990–91 to 1994–95 | 142,505 | 185,650 | 43 | 56 | 130 |
1995–96 to 1999–00 | 142,178 | 189,401 | 43 | 58 | 133 |
2000–01 to 2004–05 | 139,073 | 185,602 | 42 | 56 | 133 |
2005–06 to 2009–10 | 140,614 | 192,971 | 43 | 59 | 137 |
2010–11 to 2014–15 | 140,806 | 197,405 | 43 | 60 | 140 |
2 Constituent Elements of the Green Revolution Paradigm
-
Higher-yielding seeds and concomitant use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides: The consumption of fertilisers rose dramatically from 2 million tonnes in 1970–71 to more than 27 million tonnes in 2018–19 (Table 3). Similarly, synthetic pesticide consumption has grown sharply over the past decade (Table 4). Just six states (Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Telangana, Haryana and West Bengal) together accounted for about 70% of total chemical pesticide consumption in the country in 2019–20.Table 3Fertiliser consumption in India, 1950–2019YearFertiliser use (‘000 tonnes)1950–51701960–612941970–7122571980–8155161990–9112,5462000–0116,7022010–1128,1222018–1927,228Table 4Synthetic pesticide consumption in India, 2001–2020PeriodConsumption (‘000 tonnes)2001–0445.462004–0741.282007–1042.442010–1351.382013–1656.842016–1960.462019–2060.56
-
Breakthrough in irrigation: Following the Green Revolution there was a sea-change in the extent of irrigation, as well as in the way India irrigated her fields. Irrigated area more than doubled, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of net sown area (Fig. 1). Over time, groundwater, especially that provided by deep tubewells, has become the single largest source of irrigation (Fig. 2). This form of irrigation allows farmers greater control over water—as and when, and in the volumes that the crops require it. Over the last four decades, around 84% of total addition to the net irrigated area has come from groundwater. At 250 billion cubic metres (BCM), India draws more groundwater every year than any other country in the world. India’s annual consumption is more than that of China and the United States of America (the second and third largest groundwater-using countries) put together (Vijayshankar et al., 2011).××
-
Easier availability of credit: The access to seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and new irrigation technology was made possible by the easier availability of credit. The nationalisation of 14 banks in 1969 was a landmark step in the direction of improving access to reasonably priced credit in rural India. Recent arguments in favour of re-privatisation overlook the fact that the National Credit Council found that before nationalisation not even 1% of India’s villages were served by commercial banks. Furthermore, in 1971, the share of banks in rural credit was no more than 2.4%, with most of these loans being made to plantations, not farmers. It is the easier availability of credit that fuelled the investments that drove India’s Green Revolution (Shah et al., 2007).6
-
Role of the agricultural extension system: Since the Green Revolution meant a completely new way of doing farming, a critical role was played by the state-supported agricultural extension system. Today, it may be quite difficult to imagine what a humongous task this was, covering hundreds of thousands of farmers. Of course, the paradigm of agricultural extension during the Green Revolution was what may be described as ‘top-down, persuasive and paternalistic technology transfer’, which provided specific recommendations to farmers about the practices they should adopt. If an alternative is to be found to the Green Revolution today, great effort will be needed to re-energise and re-orient this extension system, which today finds itself in a state of almost total collapse. It will also be necessary to move towards a much more ‘farmer-to-farmer participatory extension system’.
-
A stable market: The setting up of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) in 1965 and the ensuing—and expanding—procurement operations at minimum support prices (MSPs) ensured a stable market for the farmers.7 Without this state intervention, left to the vagaries of the free market, the Green Revolution would not have taken off, as the expanded output could have created problems for the farmers, due to a fall in price at times of bumper harvest.8
3 Wheels Come Off the Green Revolution
evidence demonstrates the negative health and environmental effects of pesticides, and there is widespread understanding that intensive pesticide application can increase the vulnerability of agricultural systems to pest outbreaks and lock in continued reliance on their use. (Jepson et al., 2020)
4 The Paradigm Shift Required in Agriculture
4.1 Not Quite a Green Revolution: Towards Crop Diversification Reflecting Agroecology of Diverse Regions
Region | Period | Rice | Wheat | Nutri-cerealsa
| Pulses | Oilseeds | Sugarcane | Others | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
North West | 1962–65 | 5152 | 6724 | 7795 | 7059 | 4115 | 1539 | 1004 | 33,455 |
1980–83 | 7376 | 13,160 | 6250 | 4193 | 4154 | 1825 | 1941 | 38,821 | |
1990–93 | 7991 | 13,459 | 4512 | 3403 | 2409 | 1988 | 4588 | 38,236 | |
2003–06 | 9096 | 14,752 | 3797 | 2848 | 1819 | 2215 | 5141 | 39,549 | |
2012–14 | 9680 | 15,291 | 3319 | 2410 | 1659 | 2252 | 4741 | 39,511 | |
East | 1962–65 | 14,623 | 667 | 1719 | 3643 | 770 | 231 | 4105 | 25,655 |
1980–83 | 15,828 | 2018 | 2046 | 3382 | 1563 | 227 | 3410 | 28,416 | |
1990–93 | 15,948 | 2121 | 1307 | 2847 | 1830 | 203 | 4648 | 29,050 | |
2003–06 | 14,885 | 2193 | 1014 | 1700 | 1234 | 603 | 5757 | 27,413 | |
2012–14 | 16,358 | 2596 | 1228 | 1507 | 1396 | 307 | 4466 | 27,915 | |
Central | 1962–65 | 5934 | 5400 | 21,421 | 9375 | 6765 | 237 | 10,087 | 59,338 |
1980–83 | 6494 | 6494 | 21,975 | 10,889 | 7347 | 394 | 11,807 | 65,596 | |
1990–93 | 6822 | 6409 | 19,571 | 11,301 | 12,128 | 551 | 12,404 | 68,911 | |
2003–06 | 7001 | 7075 | 16,434 | 12,086 | 15,255 | 590 | 15,476 | 73,697 | |
2012–14 | 7495 | 9918 | 9767 | 11,887 | 17,944 | 1211 | 17,414 | 75,711 | |
South | 1962–65 | 7613 | 319 | 11,212 | 2930 | 3727 | 255 | 5733 | 31,852 |
1980–83 | 7371 | 314 | 8908 | 3388 | 4140 | 502 | 6587 | 31,366 | |
1990–93 | 7169 | 196 | 6580 | 3830 | 6776 | 655 | 7529 | 32,736 | |
2003–06 | 6613 | 250 | 5771 | 4211 | 5740 | 655 | 7798 | 31,193 | |
2012–14 | 7902 | 210 | 5595 | 4755 | 5455 | 1294 | 9790 | 34,966 | |
All India | 1962–65 | 34,500 | 13,467 | 42,368 | 23,151 | 14,829 | 2270 | 21,184 | 151,315 |
1980–83 | 37,779 | 21,541 | 39,602 | 21,872 | 17,233 | 2983 | 24,855 | 165,698 | |
1990–93 | 38,828 | 21,946 | 31,400 | 24,310 | 22,453 | 3376 | 27,011 | 168,817 | |
2003–06 | 38,913 | 24,147 | 26,926 | 20,846 | 23,973 | 3648 | 34,744 | 173,718 | |
2012–14 | 39,616 | 27,965 | 23,304 | 20,973 | 26,530 | 5019 | 35,852 | 179,260 |
Region | Period | Rice | Wheat | Nutri-cereals | Pulses | Oilseeds | Sugarcane | Others | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
North West | 1962–65 | 15 | 20 | 23 | 21 | 12 | 5 | 3 | 100 |
1980–83 | 19 | 34 | 16 | 11 | 11 | 5 | 5 | 100 | |
1990–93 | 21 | 35 | 12 | 9 | 6 | 5 | 12 | 100 | |
2003–06 | 23 | 37 | 10 | 7 | 5 | 6 | 13 | 100 | |
2012–14 | 25 | 39 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 6 | 12 | 100 | |
East | 1962–65 | 57 | 3 | 7 | 14 | 3 | 1 | 16 | 100 |
1980–83 | 56 | 7 | 7 | 12 | 6 | 1 | 12 | 100 | |
1990–93 | 55 | 7 | 5 | 10 | 6 | 1 | 16 | 100 | |
2003–06 | 54 | 8 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 2 | 21 | 100 | |
2012–14 | 59 | 9 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 16 | 100 | |
Central | 1962–65 | 10 | 9 | 36 | 16 | 11 | 0 | 17 | 100 |
1980–83 | 10 | 10 | 34 | 17 | 11 | 1 | 18 | 100 | |
1990–93 | 10 | 9 | 28 | 16 | 18 | 1 | 18 | 100 | |
2003–06 | 10 | 10 | 22 | 16 | 21 | 1 | 21 | 100 | |
2012–14 | 10 | 13 | 13 | 16 | 24 | 2 | 23 | 100 | |
South | 1962–65 | 24 | 1 | 35 | 9 | 12 | 1 | 18 | 100 |
1980–83 | 24 | 1 | 28 | 11 | 13 | 2 | 21 | 100 | |
1990–93 | 22 | 1 | 20 | 12 | 21 | 2 | 23 | 100 | |
2003–06 | 21 | 1 | 19 | 14 | 18 | 2 | 25 | 100 | |
2012–14 | 23 | 1 | 16 | 14 | 16 | 4 | 28 | 100 | |
All India | 1962–65 | 23 | 9 | 28 | 15 | 10 | 2 | 14 | 100 |
1980–83 | 23 | 13 | 24 | 13 | 10 | 2 | 15 | 100 | |
1990–93 | 23 | 13 | 19 | 14 | 13 | 2 | 16 | 100 | |
2003–06 | 22 | 14 | 16 | 12 | 14 | 2 | 20 | 100 | |
2012–14 | 22 | 16 | 13 | 12 | 15 | 3 | 20 | 100 |
Year | Rice | Wheat | Nutri-cereals | Pulses | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2007–08 | 70 | 29 | 1 | 0 | 100 |
2008–09 | 58 | 40 | 2 | 0 | 100 |
2009–10 | 52 | 41 | 7 | 0 | 100 |
2010–11 | 53 | 45 | 2 | 0 | 100 |
2011–12 | 55 | 44 | 1 | 0 | 100 |
2012–13 | 47 | 52 | 1 | 0 | 100 |
2013–14 | 55 | 43 | 2 | 0 | 100 |
2014–15 | 53 | 46 | 1 | 1 | 100 |
2015–16 | 55 | 45 | 0 | 0 | 100 |
2016–17 | 61 | 36 | 0 | 3 | 100 |
2017–18 | 54 | 44 | 0 | 2 | 100 |
2018–19 | 37 | 58 | 0 | 5 | 100 |
-
Scenario 1 (small change): Replacement of high water-demanding crops with low water-using ones to the extent of 10–25% of the crop area in the kharif season and 25% in the rabi season; and
-
Scenario 2 (higher change): Replacement of high water-demanding crops with low water-using ones to the extent of 25–50% of the crop area in the kharif season and 50% in the rabi season.
State | Scenario I (% replacement) | Scenario II (% replacement) | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Kharif | Rabi | Kharif | Rabi | |
Andhra Pradesh | 10 | 25 | 25 | 50 |
Bihar | 10 | 25 | 25 | 50 |
Gujarat | 25 | 25 | 50 | 50 |
Haryana | 25 | 25 | 50 | 50 |
Karnataka | 25 | 25 | 50 | 50 |
Madhya Pradesh | 10 | 25 | 25 | 50 |
Maharashtra | 25 | 25 | 50 | 50 |
Punjab | 25 | 25 | 50 | 50 |
Rajasthan | 0 | 25 | 0 | 50 |
Tamil Nadu | 10 | 0 | 25 | 0 |
Telangana | 10 | 25 | 25 | 50 |
-
Seasons: Crop production is strongly determined by seasons, which need to be taken into account while proposing replacements. For example, since most of the nutri-cereals are grown in the kharif season, we cannot propose a replacement of wheat (a predominantly winter crop) with nutri-cereals like jowar. Crop growing seasons for rice in Tamil Nadu are such that the proposals for replacement have to consider if the sowing and harvesting time of the replacement crops match those of rice. Similarly, for replacement of an annual crop like sugarcane in Maharashtra, we have identified a crop sequence covering both the kharif and rabi seasons, so that the replacement of one crop is with a group of two or more crops.
-
Source of irrigation and extent of control over water: Crops grown in command areas of large dams are largely irrigated by the field-flooding method. It is, therefore, difficult to replace rice grown in the canal commands and floodplains of rivers like the Godavari and Krishna in Andhra Pradesh with any other crop. However, in the non-command areas of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, mainly the undulating and upland regions, it is possible to replace rice because the major source of irrigation here is groundwater. The situation in Punjab and Haryana is similar, since groundwater accessed through tubewells is the major source of irrigation.
-
Soil conditions and agronomy: Once certain crops like rice are continuously grown in an area, the soil conditions change considerably so that any crop replacement may become difficult. This particularly applies to the low-lying regions of West Bengal, Odisha and Chhattisgarh. Similarly, when inter-cropping is practised, there are certain crop combinations involved. So, when we propose replacement of one crop (such as soyabean in Madhya Pradesh), we need to also propose replacement of other crops in the crop mix when the inter-crop does not match with the replacement crop.
State | Water intensive crop | Replacement crop | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Kharif | Rabi | Kharif | Rabi | |
Andhra Pradesh | Rice | Rice | Tur, Groundnut | Gram, Sesame |
Telangana | Rice | Rice | Tur, Jowar | Gram, Sesame |
Bihar | Rice | Wheat | Tur, Urad | Gram, Lentils |
Gujarat | Cotton | Wheat | Tur, Bajra | Gram, Rapeseed |
Haryana | Rice | Wheat | Tur, Bajra | Gram, Rapeseed |
Karnataka | Rice | Wheat | Tur, Groundnut | Gram, Moong |
Madhya Pradesh | Soybean | Wheat | Maize, Jowar | Gram, Rapeseed |
Maharashtraa | Sugarcane | Wheat | Jowar, Tur | Gram, Rapeseed |
Punjab | Rice | Wheat | Tur, Moong | Gram, Rapeseed |
Rajasthanb | Miscellaneous crops | Wheat | No change | Gram, Rapeseed |
Tamil Naduc | Rice | Tur, Urad |
State | Blue water use (BCM/Year) | Blue water saving (%) | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Baseline | Scenario I | Scenario II | Scenario I | Scenario II | |
Andhra Pradesh | 10.06 | 8.15 | 6.08 | 19 | 40 |
Telangana | 5.46 | 4.33 | 3.12 | 21 | 43 |
Bihar | 7.80 | 6.35 | 4.74 | 19 | 39 |
Gujarat | 13.22 | 10.35 | 7.48 | 22 | 44 |
Haryana | 8.39 | 7.42 | 6.38 | 12 | 24 |
Karnataka | 1.17 | 0.97 | 0.82 | 17 | 30 |
Madhya Pradesh | 14.92 | 12.16 | 9.40 | 19 | 37 |
Maharashtra | 13.93 | 10.58 | 7.24 | 24 | 48 |
Punjab | 14.26 | 11.58 | 8.26 | 19 | 42 |
Rajasthan | 15.71 | 13.97 | 13.13 | 11 | 16 |
Tamil Nadu | 5.45 | 4.95 | 4.20 | 9 | 23 |
110.35 | 90.81 | 70.83 | 18 | 36 |
given current depletion trends, cropping intensity may decrease by 20% nationwide and by 68% in groundwater-depleted regions. Even if surface irrigation delivery is increased as a supply-side adaptation strategy, cropping intensity will decrease, become more vulnerable to inter-annual rainfall variability, and become more spatially uneven. We find that groundwater and canal irrigation are not substitutable and that additional adaptation strategies will be necessary to maintain current levels of production in the face of groundwater depletion. (Jain et al., 2021)
4.2 Monoculture Impairs Resilience: Return to Polycultural Biodiversity
crops grown under ‘modern monoculture systems’ are particularly vulnerable to climate change as well as biotic stresses, a condition that constitutes a major threat to food security … what is needed is an agro-ecological transformation of monocultures by favoring field diversity and landscape heterogeneity, to increase the productivity, sustainability, and resilience of agricultural production. … Observations of agricultural performance after extreme climatic events in the last two decades have revealed that resiliency to climate disasters is closely linked to farms with increased levels of biodiversity. (Altieri et al., 2015)The vast monocultures that dominate 80% of the 1.5 billion hectares of arable land are one of the largest causes of global environmental changes, leading to soil degradation, deforestation, depletion of freshwater resources and chemical contamination. (Altieri & Nicholls, 2020)
Enhancing biodiversity in cropping systems is suggested to promote ecosystem services, thereby reducing dependency on agronomic inputs while maintaining high crop yields. Overall, diversification enhances biodiversity, pollination, pest control, nutrient cycling, soil fertility, and water regulation without compromising crop yields. (Tamburini et al., 2020)
The world is becoming less biodiverse and there is good evidence that biodiversity losses at genetic, species and ecosystem levels reduce ecosystem functions that directly or indirectly affect food production, through effects such as the lower cycling of biologically essential resources, reductions in compensatory dynamics and lower niche occupation. (Dawson et al., 2019)
4.3 Rejecting the Originative Flaw (Soil as an Input–Output Machine)
Because of the way a living system continually regenerates itself, the parts that constitute it are in fact perpetually being changed. It is the organism’s dynamic patterns that maintain its coherence. … This new understanding of nature as a self-organized, self-regenerating system extends, like a fractal, from a single cell to the global system of life on Earth.
Soil is a living entity. It is full of life. The weight of living organisms in a healthy soil is about 5 ton per hectare. The activity and species diversity of soil biota are responsible for numerous essential ecosystem services. Soil organic matter content is an indicator of soil health, and should be about 2.5% to 3.0% by weight in the root zone (top 20 cm). But soil in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Central India and Southern parts contains maybe 0.5% or maybe 0.2%.35
as the efficiency of production has increased, the efficiency of the food system as a whole – in terms of delivering nutritious food, sustainably and with little waste – has declined. Yield growth and falling food prices have been accompanied by increasing food waste, a growing malnutrition burden and unsustainable environmental degradation. (Benton & Bailey, 2019)
A food system with high TSP would be sufficiently productive (to meet human nutritional needs) whilst imposing few costs on the environment and society (so being sustainable), and highly efficient at all stages of the food chain so as to minimize waste. It would optimize total resource inputs (direct inputs and indirect inputs from natural capital and healthcare) relative to the outputs (food utilization). Maximizing TSP would maximize the number of people fed healthily and sustainably per unit input (direct and indirect). In other words, it would increase overall systemic efficiency. (ibid.)
High-input, resource-intensive farming systems, which have caused massive deforestation, water scarcities, soil depletion and high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, cannot deliver sustainable food and agricultural production. Needed are innovative systems that protect and enhance the natural resource base, while increasing productivity. Needed is a transformative process towards ‘holistic’ approaches, such as agroecology and conservation agriculture, which also build upon indigenous and traditional knowledge.
At the heart of agro-ecology is the idea that a crop field is an ecosystem in which ecological processes found in other vegetation formations such as nutrient cycling, predator/prey interactions, competition, commensalism, and successional changes also occur. Agro-ecology focuses on ecological relations in the field, and its purpose is to illuminate the form, dynamics, and function of these relations (so that) … agro-ecosystems can be manipulated to produce better, with fewer negative environmental or social impacts, more sustainably, and with fewer external inputs.
Over the past five years, the theory and practice of agroecology have crystalized as an alternative paradigm and vision for food systems. Agroecology is an approach to agriculture and food systems that mimics nature, stresses the importance of local knowledge and participatory processes and prioritizes the agency and voice of food producers. As a traditional practice, its history stretches back millennia, whereas a more contemporary agroecology has been developed and articulated in scientific and social movement circles over the last century. Most recently, agroecology—practised by hundreds of millions of farmers around the globe—has become increasingly viewed as viable, necessary and possible as the limitations and destructiveness of ‘business as usual’ in agriculture have been laid bare. (Anderson et al., 2021)
Natural farming is our indigenous system based on cow dung and urine, biomass, mulch and soil aeration […]. In the next five years, we intend to reach 20 lakh hectares in any form of organic farming, including natural farming, of which 12 lakh hectares are under Bharatiya Prakritik Krishi Paddhati Programme.39
In states like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh this is being practised already quite widely. It has proven its benefit on the ground. Now is the time that we should scale it and make it reach 16 crore farmers from the existing 30 lakhs. The whole world is trying to move away from chemical farming. Now is the time to make Indian farmers aware of its potential.40
4.4 Water Saving Seeds and Technologies
State | Practices | Crops | Blue water saved compared to conventional practices (%) | References | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Andhra Pradesh | System of rice intensification | Rice (Kh) | 50 | Ravindra and Bhagya Laxmi (2011) |
2 | Bihar | Conservation agriculturea | Rice (Kh) | 24 | Laik et al. (2014) |
Bihar | System of wheat intensification | Wheat (Rb) | 17.5 | Kumar et al. (2011) | |
3 | Gujarat | System of rice intensification | Rice (Kh) | 33 | Mevada et al. (2016) |
Gujarat | Drip irrigation | Wheat (Rb) | 48 | Singh (2013) | |
4 | Haryana | Laser land levelling | Rice (Kh) | 30 | Ladha (2009) |
Haryana | Conservation tillage and soil residue cover | Wheat (Rb) | 18 | Ladha et al. (2016) | |
5 | Karnataka | Direct dry seeding of rice | Rice (Kh) | 46 | Soriano et al. (2018) |
6 | Maharashtra | Drip irrigation | Sugarcane (Annual) | 57 | Pawar et al. (2013) |
7 | MP | Drip irrigation | Wheat (Rb) | 28.4 | Chouhan et al. (2015) |
8 | Punjab | Laser land levelling | Rice (Kh) | 25.0 | Ladha (2009) |
Punjab | Drip irrigation | Wheat (Rb) | 21.1 | Suryavanshi and Buttar (2016) | |
9 | Rajasthan | Deficit irrigation | Wheat (Rb) | 17 | Rathore et al. (2017) |
10 | Tamil Nadu | Young seedlings, wide spacing with alternate wetting and drying irrigation | Rice (Kh) | 79.8 | Oo et al. (2018) |
11 | Telangana | System of rice intensification | Rice (Kh) | 50 | Ravindra and Bhagya Laxmi (2011) |
4.5 Reversing the Neglect of Rainfed Areas: Focus on Green Water and Protective Irrigation
(i) increase water infiltration; (ii) store any runoff for recycling; (iii) decrease losses by evaporation and uptake by weeds; (iv) increase root penetration in the subsoil; (v) create a favorable balance of essential plant nutrients; (vi) grow drought avoidance/adaptable species and varieties; (vii) adopt cropping/farming systems that produce a minimum assured agronomic yield in a bad season rather than those that produce the maximum yield in a good season; (viii) invest in soil/land restoration measures (i.e., terraces and shelter belts); (ix) develop and use weather forecasting technology to facilitate the planning of farm operations; and (x) use precision or soil-specific farming technology using legume-based cropping systems to reduce losses of Carbon and Nitrogen and to improve soil fertility. Similarly, growing crops and varieties with better root systems is a useful strategy to reduce the risks in a harsh environment. The root system is important to drought resistance.
-
Building on the intuition of the Hon’ble Prime Minister who initiated the Soil Health Card Scheme, the soil testing capacities of the entire country need to be urgently and comprehensively ramped up. This means not only establishing more soil testing laboratories, but also testing on a much wider range of parameters, based on the `living soils’ vision, where testing is extended to the 3Ms (moisture, organic matter and microbes). This will make it possible to assess over time whether the claims of different farming approaches can be validated as being truly ‘regenerative’ and for an assessment to be made about the kinds of interventions that may or may not be required in each specific context.
-
Widespread and affordable facilities must be made available for testing the maximum residue level of chemicals in farm produce, in line with regulations of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), without which there will be no guarantee that the produce meets required health safety standards.
-
This also requires large-scale and separate processing, storage and transport facilities for the produce of ‘natural farmers’ so that it does not get contaminated by the produce of conventional chemical farmers. Storage of pulses needs careful attention to moisture and temperature. Dry and cool pulses can be stored for longer periods. This demands major investments in new technologies that are now easily available. For crops like millets, processing remains an unaddressed challenge. Therefore, millet-processing infrastructure needs to become a priority, to incentivise farmers to move to water-saving crops and also to move them up the value chain.
-
The present farm input subsidy regime that incentivises production with a high intensity of chemical inputs must shift to one that supports the production of organic inputs and provides payment for farm ecosystem services, like sustainable agriculture practices, improving soil health etc. This can, in fact, become a way to generate rural livelihoods, especially if the production of organic inputs could be taken up at a large scale by federations of women SHGs and farmer producer organisations (FPOs).
-
The SHG-bank linkage would also be crucial in order to ensure that credit actually reaches those who need it the most and whose dependence on usurious rural moneylenders grew after strict profitability norms were applied to public sector banks in 1991 (Shah, 2007). Shah et al. (2007) explain how SHGs led by women enable these banks to undertake sound lending, rather than the botched-up, target-driven lending of the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP) in the years following bank nationalisation. The SHG-Bank Linkages Programme has not only benefitted borrowers, but has also improved the profitability of many bank branches in rural and remote areas, thus mitigating the inclusion-profitability dilemma that afflicted public sector banks in the first two decades after nationalisation. As a result, formal rural credit has once again made a comeback during the last decade, after a period of decline in the 1990s and early 2000s. Such credit support will be crucial if the paradigm shift in farming proposed in this chapter is to be scaled up on the ground.
-
Finally, the entire agricultural extension system needs to be rejuvenated and revamped, to make it align with this new paradigm. Special focus must be placed on building a whole army of Community Resource Persons (CRPs), farmers trained in all aspects of agroecology, who would be the best ambassadors of this fresh perspective and understanding, working in a truly `rhizomatic’ manner, allowing for multiple, non-hierarchical points of knowledge representation, interpretation and sharing.46
5 The Paradigm Shift Required in Water47
5.1 Participatory Irrigation Management in the Irrigation Commands
5.2 Participatory Groundwater Management
5.3 Breaking the Groundwater-Energy Nexus and Legal Reform
5.4 Protecting and Rejuvenating India’s Catchment Areas
5.5 Building Trans-Disciplinarity in Water
5.6 Overcoming Hydro-schizophrenia
5.7 Building Multi-stakeholder Partnerships
6 Conclusion
Within the uniform predictability of modern agriculture, the unpredictable emerges … Two-thirds of cancers have their origins in environmental toxins, accounting for millions of annual fatalities … we inhabit not the Earth but the atmosphere, a sea of life; as swimmers in this sea, we cannot be biologically isolated … Biologists have begun questioning the idea that each tree is an “individual”—it might be more accurately understood as a node in a network of underworld exchanges between fungi, roots, bacteria, lichen, insects, and other plants. The network is so intricate that it’s difficult to say where one organism ends and the other begins.53
There is a large list of deadly pathogens that emerged due to the ways in which we practice agriculture, among which are: H5N1-Asian Avian Influenza, H5N2, multiple Swine Flu variants (H1N1, H1N2), Ebola, Campylobacter, Nipah virus, Q fever, hepatitis E, Salmonella enteritidis, foot-and-mouth disease, and a variety of influenzas. (Altieri & Nicholls, 2020)