A ray of hope for starved soils
The starved and sickened soils in the country can probably breathe a sigh of relief now.
After decades of neglect, the policy makers are acknowledging the real concerns and are talking about taking some steps in the right direction. The approach paper prepared by the Planning Commission, which provides the basic architecture for the next Five Year Plan, emphasises the need for a clear focus on organic/ecological fertilisation to address the soil health crisis. The draft was cleared by the cabinet in September and is awaiting final clearance from the National Development Council in October.
The move is significant considering the fact that the organic/ecological fertilisation hardly received any government support ever since the time of Green revolution. A survey conducted by Greenpeace India in five states covering 1,000 farmers as part of the ‘Living Soils’ campaign last year revealed that only 1 per cent of the farmers received any kind of support for ecological fertilisation. This neglect left the soils starved of organic matter, its lifeline.
The debilitated soils were further subjected to chemical abuse over several decades, supported by a lenient subsidy policy. The policy makers continued to take the issue for granted, drafting hollow policies to tackle the crisis with minimal spending, till a massive soil health crisis surfaced in the country posing threat to food security.
Now, the policy makers seem to have woken up to the reality. Better late than never! The approach paper rightly lists out a series of ecological practices such as recycling of crop residues, bulk addition of organic matter, composting, crop rotations, multiple cropping, use of biofertilisers etc. To effectively implement this, one cannot go with the conventional approach. Neither the existing incentive system of subsidising the input manufacturer nor the top down institutional approach will work here.
What needs to be done
A community based approach with agro-ecological interventions in contiguous farm lands with active participation of farmers and other stakeholders, along with a strategy to effectively manage biomass (on and off-farm) can help translate the positive lines in paper to action on ground. A biomass strategy should address the concerns associated with availability, competing uses, and come up with on farm and off-farm interventions building on community wisdom and finding synergy with various sectors.
The grassroot institutional mechanism should be supported by an incentive system. The incentives can be in the form of payment for ecosystem services, support for community level enterprises, eco-bonuses etc. The incentives may be rooted through the community level institutions.
In a country like India where the small and marginal farmers are a majority, an investment in an institutional mechanism at the grass roots will help improve the efficiency of extension systems. It will help facilitate the grassroot level planning and make district level plans a reality as envisaged by government’s flagship programmes such as Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana. Improved soil health will lead to healthy crops and nutritious produces which will help improve the nutritional security.
All this will lead to improvement in overall performance of farm lands and livelihood security of small farmers. Moreover, the chemical fertiliser based soil nutrition is increasingly becoming unsustainable and unaffordable due to various reasons. Prime minister Manmohan Singh in a recent speech at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, rightly urged the leading scientists in the country to systematically look for organic alternatives and highlighted the risks associated with excessive reliance on hydrocarbon (fossil fuel) based soil nutrition practices.
Chemical fertiliser production is highly dependent on fossil fuels and hence makes our food production systems highly vulnerable to dwindling fossil fuel reserves and its fluctuating prices. It’s very important for us to have a plan to recycle available resources, develop alternative means of soil nutrition practices and end the reliance on these chemicals.
This investment needs to be seen as a first step towards self reliance, ecological stability, environmental sustainability and overall well being of Indian Agriculture. The approach paper shows the path, but there are several hurdles on the way. To overcome this, policy makers needs to think out of the box, make this investment for a grass root level institution, which can go a long way in sustaining food production in the country.
(The writer is with Greenpeace India)
