India’s farms will keep feeding its people while poisoning its future

The path to clean air and healthy soil begins with rethinking how we grow our food

This October, residents of Delhi-NCR breathed a sigh of relief — 10 days into the month, the air quality was still in the ‘moderate’ category, uncharacteristic for this time of the year.

Usually, by this time, the region gets enveloped in a thick layer of smog, owing particularly to cold weather, low wind speed, and farm fires from the neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. This pushes the air quality index to hazardous levels, leaving residents choking and breathless.

This year, a late monsoon withdrawal, coupled with farmers delaying stubble burning in the fields due to floods in September, has meant that air pollution is beginning to increase, but later than usual.

Stubble-burning, however, is only one among the plethora of environmental challenges India is facing — soil-quality deterioration, groundwater depletion, and contamination are giving policymakers sleepless nights.

Though the problems appear distinct, they share a common origin: contemporary agricultural practices.

Legally, too, they represent a deeper structural issue — the divergence between India’s agricultural and environmental law-policy frameworks.

Despite clear synergies between the two, India’s law-policy architecture continues to treat agriculture and environment as isolated and distinct spheres.

Obsolete agricultural policies

India’s agricultural policy has been driven by the logic of food security and justifiably so. Feeding a large population was among the foremost challenges for the newly independent Indian State in 1947. The Green Revolution was directed towards the singular goal of enhancing agricultural productivity.

By adopting measures such as double-cropping, increased farming areas, adoption of high-yield variety seeds, use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and improved irrigation facilities, the Green Revolution delivered on that goal.

But the productivity ‘hangover’ did not fade. India went into overdrive after the liberalisation of the 1990s, and the hangover has continued to drive India’s agricultural policy.

Consider, for instance, the ‘Terms of Reference’ of a recent NITI Aayog report on pulses. The report points to a policy preference for self-sufficiency and productivity enhancement of pulses with only a tangential reference to sustainable agriculture.

Several other examples, such as subsidies for fertilisers, power, and irrigation, suggest a similar attitude in agricultural policies.

It is no one’s case that India should abandon productivity as a policy preference in the wake of its rising population. But focusing solely on productivity makes little sense amidst increasing environmental challenges.

Environment-agriculture interdependency

Agriculture and the environment are not two different worlds. Farming depends on soil, water, and climate. Conversely, agriculture shapes their health.

A recent IPCC report notes that an expansion of areas under agriculture has contributed to an increase in net anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (around 13% of carbon dioxide, 44% of methane and 81% of nitrous oxide globally during 2007-2016), loss of natural ecosystems, and declining biodiversity.

It further notes that agriculture currently accounts for about 70% of global freshwater use. The situation in India is even more dire. The Green Revolution has caused loss of indigenous crop varieties, and also substantially changed the Indian food consumption pattern.

It has also over-stressed water resources: 91% of freshwater use in India is attributable to the agricultural sector. Substantial and unwarranted use of pesticides and fertilisers have caused water pollution, significant damage to human health and soil, and loss of human lives.

Residents of North India are now accustomed to breathing alarming levels of hazardous air every year, caused by stubble burning during the winter season.

Bad to worse

What is worse is that the architecture of India’s environmental law continues to provide a safe harbour for agricultural activities.

This is because Indian environmental statutes are primarily directed at regulating and minimising industrial impact on the environment. Take, for example, the Water & Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Acts of 1974 and 1981, respectively. These legislation pay minimal to no attention to the impact of conventional agricultural practices on the affected environmental systems.

The Environmental Protection Act of 1986, India’s overarching environmental legislation, takes the same trajectory. Despite adopting an expansive definition for ‘environment’, ‘environmental pollution’ and ‘hazardous substances’, it makes no reference to pollution caused through agricultural activities. Same is the case with the Environmental Impact Assessment Notifications of 2006.

Such a dichotomy in India’s environmental and agricultural law-policy is absurd. The need of the hour is to align them, particularly because of climate change.

It must be understood that unsustainable agricultural productivity cannot fulfil the twin goals of food security and ecological resilience for present and future Indians.

Inadequate efforts

Governmental agriculture policies in the last decade or so have echoed this concern. Different programmes, initiatives, and drives have been launched towards that end.

The most notable among them is the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA). As one of the core missions under India’s National Action Plan for Climate Change, the NMSA is an umbrella initiative that focuses on agroforestry, rainfed areas, water and soil health management, climate impacts, and adaptation.

In addition to the NMSA, the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana also promotes adoption of precision farming techniques such as micro-irrigation. Similarly, the Integrated Watershed Management Programme supports rainwater harvesting.

These policy shifts are optimistic, but they are under-financed, and have slow adoption rates. A recent report highlights that the Budget allocation to the NMSA is minuscule (0.8%), compared to the overall budget of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

Co-ordinated, incremental actions

The biggest hurdle in transitioning towards sustainable agricultural practices appears to be the fear of low agricultural productivity by policymakers and farmers themselves.

Other factors include lack of knowledge and training among farmers, the absence of a safety net from potential loss of yields, limited incentives for shifting to sustainable agricultural practices, and under-developed markets for sustainable agricultural products. The government should focus on addressing these concerns, and also convince farmers and organisations working with farmers of the positive impacts of sustainable agriculture: low input costs, better nutritional value, and health benefits.

Undoubtedly, the geographic spread and the socio-economic and political significance of agriculture pose enormous challenges for law and policymakers in India to effectuate meaningful shifts towards it.

But if the transition towards sustainable agriculture is to happen, some hard decisions need to be made. It is an urgent endeavour that requires co-ordinated and incremental actions from all stakeholders, particularly the governments and farmers.

Akhilendra Pratap Singh teaches law at BML Munjal University, Haryana.

This article was first published under Creative Commons by 360info.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.