While the government is taking small steps towards sustainable agriculture, there are challenges ranging from India’s agricultural workforce to its political economy that need to be acknowledged and addressed.
If we look at the new agriculture programs from the Government of India, the future of sustainable farming practices in India looks bright.
For instance, in 2021, the Government announced that the National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) will make agriculture more productive, sustainable and lucrative.
The National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) has a vision: “NMSA will cater to key dimensions of ‘Water use efficiency’, ‘Nutrient Management’ and ‘Livelihood diversification’ through adoption of sustainable development pathway by progressively shifting to environment-friendly technologies, adoption of energy efficient equipment, conservation of natural resources, integrated farming, etc.”
NMSA’s vision also states, “NMSA aims at promoting location specific improved agronomic practices through soil health management, enhanced water use efficiency, judicious use of chemicals, crop diversification, progressive adoption of crop-livestock farming systems and integrated approaches like crop-sericulture, agro-forestry, fish farming, etc.”
One can notice bouquet-level efforts at adopting sustainable practices in numerous places. Popular magazines often feature such stories.
Another encouraging note is how small Indian states, like Sikkim, are becoming more sustainable. For instance, Andhra Pradesh has been making concerted efforts to scale up sustainable agricultural practices. However, the practitioners on the ground purposely come from marginal and small-holder communities.
The future looks bright, indeed, if not for some critical roadblocks.
Sustainable farming is desirable, and there’s very little disagreement about its prospects. However, as the expression goes, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride to the palace.
It’s therefore important to understand the numerous knotty issues involved in achieving the NMSA’s objectives. Tackling the five critical issues listed below is crucial to ensure the future of sustainable farming practices in India.
As farmers shift from “conventional” farming that involves use of synthetic chemical nutrients and plant protection measures to sustainable agricultural practices, which depend on natural inputs, crop yields tend to drop in the initial years. New practices are emerging to ensure multi-season and diversified cropping, which would reduce the economic impacts of a yield drop. However, these are still in the nascent stage.
Further, paid out costs in sustainable practices tend to be lower than in conventional farming. However, the labour inputs are higher and there’s no significant price advantage to compensate for the yield drop. In fact, the promised realisation of extra price for the crop input is a reason why farmers even consider it. Cost savings, though resulting in the same effect on net income, does not seem to tempt farmers. This explains the reluctance of farmers to adopt such practices. No quick fix is available.
Sustainable practices increase the workload of farmers considerably. There is increased drudgery in collecting materials for preparing natural nutrients and natural plant protection materials.
We know agriculture is already rapidly relying on women and older labourers. Thus, the burden of drudgery falls heavily on them when households adopt sustainable practices. Currently there are no systems in place for collective manufacturing of these materials. And it’s a moot point if the efforts to promote more sustainable practices — which are more labour-intensive — lead an already-reluctant young man to enthusiastically take up farming.
Natural nutrients and plant protection materials require animal waste, cow urine, leaves of certain plants and trees and other “waste” vegetative matter. Increasing mechanisation has resulted in smaller animal herds in villages, leading to scarcity of animal waste. Such is this scarcity, that cow urine markets are emerging in many regions.
In vast tracts of dry land in the country, vegetation is scarce. So the availability of leaves or other plant protection materials is a problem. Even vegetation for mulching is becoming hard to find. Increasing dairy production means that farmers use every possible piece of crop residue tends as dry fodder. Only the regions with extreme crop intensity experience the problem of surplus crop residue. And, for reasons explained later, farmers in these regions are the least likely to shift to sustainable practices .
For decades, the national priority to achieve food security has driven the agriculture policy. However, we realised this goal at the cost of extremely unsustainable farming practices in the granaries of Punjab, Haryana, Western UP and North Rajasthan. If there’s a large-scale shift to sustainable farming, or even a shift away from their paddy-wheat-paddy crop cycles, the current food surplus could evaporate in a few years.
Arguably, the essential foodgrain requirement has reduced over the years. This is mainly due to the reduction in manual labour from mechanisation, easier modes of transportation and other such conditions.
However, one cannot presume such a drop while planning national food systems. Balancing the need for basic food grain sufficiency while prioritising sustainable agriculture is a complex job, which maybe hasn’t been fully understood or conceptualised yet.
Even if the contours of this balancing act were understood and converted into actionable policies, the daunting compulsions of the political economy of very perverse policies that currently haunt Indian agriculture would need to be understood.
For instance, while groundwater needs to be conserved and recharged, unchecked subsidies on farm electricity lead to extremely irresponsible water-drawl from aquifers. Subsidies on chemical fertilisers are both very expensive to the economy and deleterious to the goal of sustainable agriculture. Yet there is no way any government can actually reduce them.
Efforts so far have been only to check misdirection of these subsidies. Most sensible economists will agree that the best way to help farm households is through direct income transfer schemes. Neither minimum support price on crops or waiver of loans or subsidies on inputs make economic sense. Yet what prevails is precisely what is undesirable.
Given the irrational and exuberant opposition to perfectly sensible steps in rationalising the farm economy – as seen in the farmer agitation – there seems to be no possibility of reversing these policies driven by perverse economics.
So, to summarise, I believe the absence of higher-price-to-output in sustainable farming reduces its attractiveness. One must understand the balance between maintaining food security and moving towards sustainable farming first, before making it a goal.
We must also realise that sustainable farming imposes greater drudgery on women and the elderly — already overburdened in most farm operations.
And finally, the current drivers of the political economy in the farm sector are not congenial to the shift to sustainable agriculture.
May we then conclude that sustainable agriculture will become a reality around the same time there’s total prohibition in India?
In both the cases the mind is willing but the spirit resists!
Sanjiv Phansalkar is the director of VikasAnvesh Foundation, Pune. He was earlier a faculty member at the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA). Phansalkar is a fellow of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad.
