From just 42,000 hectares under certified organic farming in 2003-04, farmland under this nature-friendly form of cultivation has expanded to about 750,000 hectares in 2009-10, marking a spectacular 18-fold increase. If 300,000 hectares of area under various stages of conversion to recognised organic farming is also taken into account, this growth would work out to a whopping 25-fold. To this can be added millions of hectares where fertilisers and other chemicals are, in any case, seldom used.
However, this remarkable spread of organic agriculture is not so much because of the farmers’ concern for ecology as it is due to a growing demand for organic food as well as promotion of such farming by the government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Besides, it could also be viewed as the farmers’ response to the premium prices that organically-grown products fetch in the niche market for such food items. Non-food crops are rarely grown on certified organic farmlands.
Globally, too, organic farming has taken rapid strides as a demand-driven activity. According to the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), an apex body of organic organisations, about 32.2 million hectares worldwide were cultivated organically in 2007. In addition, organic wild products were harvested in approximately 30 million hectares to cater to an estimated $46-billion global market for organic products.
However, despite such impressive growth as well as good future prospects, organic agriculture has no precise and universally accepted definition. Nor is this mode of cultivation wholly incontrovertible from the standpoint of sustainability and food security, notably for filling the billions of hungry or under-fed bellies. As a proportion of total agricultural output, organic produce remains just a tiny fraction, less than 1 per cent, domestically as also globally.
Most people deem organic agriculture as a farming system that does not use synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, plant growth regulators and other such inputs. But some other definitions view it from the health angle — the health of various types of soil, ecosystems and people. That makes organic farming a relatively more complicated activity, requiring judicious mix of crop rotation, green manure, compost, biological pest control and farm mechanisation. Genetically modified crops are strictly prohibited in all modes of organic agriculture, though such crops can make it easier to reap bigger harvests without productivity-boosting inputs like fertilisers and pesticides.
Indeed, organic farming found its most formidable detractor in the late Nobel laureate Norman E Borlaug, who is globally hailed as the father of green revolution. His most often quoted, albeit controversial, remarks seem worth recalling. Borlaug said: “Even if you could use all the organic material that you have — the animal manure, the human waste, plant residues — and get them back in the soil, you couldn’t feed more than 4 billion people. In addition, if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests.”
Borlaug even discounted the plea that organic farming produced more nutritive products. “As far as the plants are concerned, they can’t tell whether nitrate ion comes from artificial chemicals or from decomposed organic matter,” he often argued.
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Indeed, some of Borlaug’s views, especially those concerning the quality of organic products, have since been corroborated by the outcome of scientific investigations published recently in reputed international journals. These studies have found no substantive nutritive superiority of the organically grown products over others.
Borlaug’s logic regarding the source of plant nutrients for the crops, too, is not wholly unfounded. For, farmyard manures usually contain very little, less than 1 per cent, nitrogen (N) against that of 46 per cent in urea. Manures also have a low content of phosphorous (P) and potash (K). These are, therefore, required to be added in huge quantities to meet the needs of plants, especially those of high-yielding varieties. That much quantity of manure may be difficult to arrange for. But the utility of manure in replenishing soils’ micro-nutrients and maintaining their biological and physical health is indisputable.
Regardless of its merits and demerits, however, organic farming needs to grow to cater to the consumers who, for whatever reasons, wish to eat such products despite high prices. Also, this form of agriculture is desirable for fragile soils of hilly areas. It is, therefore, an encouraging sign that several hilly states, notably, Uttarakhand, Nagaland, Sikkim and Mizoram, have declared their intention to turn 100 per cent organic. Other hilly areas need to emulate their example.