Resurrecting sustainable farming in India’s Granary: current practices, challenges and solutions

ABSTRACT

The study aims to ascertain farmers’ practices, challenges faced, and suggestions for scaling up crop diversification and sustainable agriculture in Punjab, India’s Granary. The results highlight that both organic and conventional farmers are grappling with similar challenges. However, a higher proportion of organic farmers cited difficulty in marketing, high labor requirement, low yield and low income as major challenges. Farmers offered several suggestions for scaling up production, resource access, and marketing facilitation. Valuable insights are offered into how ingenious low-cost solutions can alleviate resource-constrained conditions and state policymaking geared to create an enabling environment while engaging with farmers and stakeholders.

KEYWORDS:

• Practices
• challenges
• solutions
• organic farming
• India

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the support and advice from numerous stakeholders, especially the respondent farmers. The consistent perseverance and efforts of our talented research team, including the project junior research fellow Maitri Sharma and interns Malika Kukreja and Sheena Chadha, are highly appreciated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The Minimum Support Price (MSP) is a “minimum price” for any crop the government considers remunerative for farmers and hence deserving of “support.” Currently, the MSP is fixed for 23 farm commodities. The procurement of paddy and wheat from farmers at MSP remains intrinsic to the state’s agricultural policy. Over the last four decades, one of the lowest increases in MSP has been for wheat and cotton, at a compounded rate of 6.63% and 6.45%, respectively. Surprisingly, the MSP for rice (common), which the farmers in Punjab have favored, stood at Rs. 1,940 per quintal in the marketing season 2021–22, an increase of 7.36% compounded annually from Rs. 74 in 1975–76. In their maiden policy to promote crop diversification and save groundwater, the newly elected first-time government in Punjab announced procuring green gram on MSP during 2022–23. Paradoxically, the State nodal agency could purchase less than 12% of stocks on MSP leading to a distress sale by farmers to private traders (https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/minimum-support-price-msp-farmers-explained-6706253, accessed Oct 3 2021). Thus, MSPs are rarely effective except for wheat and rice.

2. A distinction needs to be drawn between organic and natural farming. Organic farming applies inputs from the market, which natural farming abstains from this, i.e., use at the farm or village level (Dorin 2022).

3. The Public Distribution System (PDS) evolved as a system of managing scarcity by distributing food grains at affordable prices. Over the years, PDS has become an important part of the Government’s policy for the management of the food economy in the country (https://dfpd.gov.in/pd-Introduction.htm, accessed Oct 3 2021).

4. Studies focusing on determining farmers’ experiences in adopting organic farming practices in Punjab include Kaur and Kalra (2010), Singh (2010), Kalra et al. (2012), Tomar (2019), Kaur (2020), and Singh (2020) Data for other more holistic farming systems, like natural farming, are missing as the offtake is negligible.

5. The Participatory Guarantee System of India (PGS-India) is a quality assurance initiative that emphasizes the participation of stakeholders and operates outside the frame of third-party certification. (https://pgsindia-ncof.gov.in/pgs-india, accessed Jan 25 2021).

6. The National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP), launched in 2001, laid the foundation for the systematic development of the organic agriculture sector in India (https://apeda.gov.in/apedawebsite/organic/data.htm, accessed Jan 4 2021).

7. A workshop on “Survey Field Work and Data Collection” was held on Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021, for the facilitators by an expert agronomist from the School of Organic Farming, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana.

8. Consultations were held with multiple stakeholders, including Krishi Vigyan Kendras at S.A.S. Nagar (Mohali) and Patiala, Nabha Foundation at Patiala, Baba Nanak Trust at S.A.S. Nagar, Khaalis Collective at S.A.S. Nagar, and Arms2Farms Technosolutions Pvt Ltd. at S.A.S. Nagar, for identification of best sustainable practices adopted. Thus, eight sustainable practice categories were identified, namely, agrobiodiversity and landscape management, soil health and nutrient management, water management, cropping management, weed, pest and disease management, waste and energy management, post-harvest management, and work integrity, health, and safety management.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund, U.K., under Grant No. BB/P027970/1.