To encourage organic farming in the state and to restrict fertiliser use, the Madhya Pradesh government is likely to bring a law to put a blanket ban on areas where farmers have not yet used chemical fertilisers. Further, the state government has also plans to open organic agriculture universities to promote modern farming techniques in an organic way, besides initiating a process to start carbon credit in agriculture too. A policy in this regard is ready and likely to be approved by the state Cabinet soon.
“We have conducted experiments on organic farming and the results are encouraging. The myth-buster process has revealed that organic farming in which we have used cow-dung, neem, besan (gram flour) and gur (jaggery), boosted micro organism growth in fields. We have yielded one quintal more per acre in organic farming than what we have cultivated in controlled farm by using chemical fertilisers at our Fanda (Near Bhopal) demonstration farm,” Minister for Farmers' Welfare and Agriculture Development Ramkrishna Kusmaria, who holds a doctorate in agriculture said.
At present Madhya Pradesh contributes 30 per cent to the total organic farming in India. Of the total 7.7 million farmers, approximately 50,000 farmers of the state have not yet adopted chemical fertilisers for farming. “We want to increase productivity; the area of organic farming is yet very low at 400,000 hectares of the total 15 million hectares. The new policy focuses on organic farming promotion through training, extension and gradual shifting from chemical fertilisers to green manure,” the minister said.
The new policy will also pave ways for the government to get certification of organic crops from national agency like Apeda. “We are also mulling over amending some existing Acts to ban use of chemical fertilisers in areas, like tribal areas, where farmers yet do not use chemical fertilisers. The certification would certain help us earning more price for our yield,” he said.
Though the minister has plans to launch a new policy, it is yet not clear how the policy would be implemented through demonstrations, training and promotional activities, when the department of agriculture is falling short of staff.
“The department has not recruited field staff since 1992. In absence of field staff it is difficult to implement policy guidelines in proper way as a result the ultimate aim of the policy may suffer,” an insider in the department said. State mainly grows non-genetically modified soya, wheat, and toor dal, besides gram, mustard, basmati rice and sugarcane. And the use of fertilisers hovers between 600,000 tonnes to 800,000 tonnes.