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The Road to Scalable Organic Farming

A. Amarender Reddy and Tulsi Lingareddy

Indian farmers’ income has remained a cause for concern with stagnant yields and rising costs. Crop yields’ responsiveness to fertilisers has declined over a period leading to more and more application of fertilisers. Similarly, continuous and excess use of chemical pesticides is leading to pest resistance and loss of yields. Further, such excessive application of fertilisers and pesticides is not only leading to higher costs of production but also causing accumulation of chemicals affecting soil fertility, water pollution and loss of bio-diversity.

In such a scenario, adopting organic farming practices can potentially improve farmers’ incomes by reducing cost of production and fetching premium prices for organic produce, while also ensuring sustainable use of natural resources and conservation of biodiversity of agricultural ecosystem. Towards this, there is a need to devise suitable measures addressing various challenges in scaling-up of organic farming in the country.

India’s unique advantages for shifting to organic farming

Indian agriculture has unique advantages for shifting to organic farming. Organic farming is not new, as Indian agriculture was traditionally naturally cultivated with negligible use of chemicals till 1950s. The average use of chemical fertiliser was very limited at about only one kg of per hectare on average in the early 1950s, while the use of chemical pesticides was started in 1948 with the import of benzene hexachloride (BHC) to control locusts. Further, the use of herbicides is a more recent practice with limited adoption.

Moreover, Indian agriculture has inherent advantages of traditional knowledge & practices, abundance of rural labour, vast biodiversity, etc. Moreover, small farm size can be a potentially enabling factor for taking up organic farming especially with labour intensive operations. Hence, shifting to organic farming can be relatively easier for Indian farmers.

As a result, India has the largest number of organic farmers and second largest area under organic farming according to the report World of Organic Agriculture Statistics and Emerging Trends 2025 by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture FiBL. However, the progress has been rather slow covering only for about 2% agricultural land at 4.5 million hectares confined to selected crops and states.

Potential opportunities

Globally, the demand for organic products is rising steadily over the past two decades or so. The area under organic farming has increased manifold from about 14 million hectares in 2000 to about 99 million hectares in 2023. Size of global organic market is estimated at around USD 230 billion in 2023 and is expected to double in the coming years to reach about USD 564 billion by 2030.

Such expanding market provides potential opportunity for Indian farmers to expand their market share. While the US has the largest share, European organic markets are growing rapidly providing opportunity to diversify export destinations for Indian organic products.

Nevertheless, rising domestic demand for organic farm products is another potential opportunity for organic farmers. Domestic organic product market registered a sharper growth rate of 17% CAGR from Rs. 1,800 crore in 2019 to about Rs. 3,340 crore in 2023 compared to global rate of 8% CAGR according to Crisil.

Challenges and way forward

Despite the unique advantages, growth of organic farming in India remained stagnant fluctuating in the range of 2.7 to 3.6 million tonnes during 2019-20 to 2023-24 according to APEDA. Further, Indian organic product exports declined from about 8.8 lakh tonnes valued at USD 1040 million in 2020-21 to about 2.61 lakh tonnes valued at USD 495 million in 2023-24 according to APEDA. There is an urgent need to reverse this trend with necessary policy support and measures.

Major challenges of organic farming on postharvest management include lack of market linkages, packaging and certification facilities, infrastructure and logistics for storage and timely transportation for ensuring quality and quantity etc. There is lack of standardisation of procedures for storage, processing and transport specific for organic products. As a result, nearly 40% of organic farm produce is sold in the general markets as per the estimates of Crisil in 2024.

Other major challenges include lack of adequate availability of bio-fertilisers and bio-pesticides resulting to low yields. Further, there is very limited progress in research and development of crop varieties better suited for organic cultivation and other inputs required for achieving better yields in organic farming.

Another major challenge is lack of adequate awareness among both farmers and consumers. Although organic farming as a concept may be familiar for farmers, the widespread non-organic cultivation over past six decades has disrupted farmers’ linkages with organic input sources and output markets. Similarly, domestic consumers who may want to buy chemical free organic products but not aware about authentic certifications and labels that can ensure their quality.

Hence, there is a need to establish input and output linkages with farmers along the required infrastructure and logistics facilitating quality standardisation, testing, certification, labelling etc. To promote exports, it is essential to devise strategic plans identifying export potential organic products based on global demand and to establish farmers’ linkages with export channels with the requisite infrastructure and logistics in place for ensuring the quality and certifications compliant with the global standards.

Towards this, there is a need to scale-up operations of the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP) and Participatory Guarantee System of India (PGS-India).

Further, it is vital to scale-up research and development of crop cultivars, innovative cultivation practices and inputs. In addition, it is equally imperative to create widespread awareness among producers and consumers through agricultural extension system and campaigns for facilitating successful adoption of organic farm products on both supply and demand sides.

Thus, considering the extensive benefits of organic farming including health safety by avoiding chemicals, sustainable use of soil and water resources, conservation of ecology and biodiversity etc., it is vital to scale-up promotional measures to boost organic farming in the country.

[Dr. A. Amarender Reddy is Joint Director, School of Crop Health Policy Support Research (SCHPSR), ICAR-National Institute of Biotic Stress Management (ICAR-NIBSM), Raipur. Dr. Tulsi Lingareddy is Senior Economist, Sustainable Finance and Agriculture, Mumbai. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M. K. Venu.]

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Saroj Kushwaha Shows the Way for Highly Creative and Climate Resilient Farming

Bharat Dogra

Adopting climate-resilient farming is sometimes depicted as a very burdensome task. However Saroj Kushwaha, a woman small farmer of Pathari village in Tikamgarh district, Madhya Pradesh, is practicing climate resilient farming very happily and in very creative ways. She has succeeded in reducing the burden of fossil fuels on her farm, planted plenty of trees, improved soil and at the same time with diversification she has adapted herself well to weather uncertainties in times of climate change, while also increasing her net income. She has achieved all this on the basis of her small scale farming, while also improving nutrition and health of family members and also arranging for college education of not just her daughter but also her daughter in law.

She is happy also because the work she is doing is so creative that it never looks like drudgery and even though she works very hard, she is not burdened or overwhelmed by this work. It is in fact because of this creativity that her son who had been confused and wayward earlier has reformed himself and is devoting his time to farm work. At the time of my recent visit, in fact, both mother and son were working quite happily together in the farm.

While Saroj is happy in her work, this should not be taken to mean that she does not have problems or does not need extra help. Many problems are in fact created by increasingly erratic weather and rainfall, such as the losses suffered in the previous kharif crop by excessive rain. At such times she certainly needs help and her courage and creativity in moving towards climate resilient farming should certainly be helped and rewarded from the various climate justice and climate response funds. Such help should be generously extended to all farmers making similar efforts. Such support can be very helpful for several farmers to take a similar path of climate resilient and ecologically protective farming while at the same also protecting or even improving their livelihood and economic prospects.

This family has about four acres of farmland, scattered at different places. About three years back, influenced by a campaign for natural farming and farm biodiversity initiated by SRIJAN voluntary organization, Saroj and her family decided to make a number of significant changes in their farming patterns.

Firstly, they shifted from chemical fertilizers to organic fertilizers made on their own farm from cow-dung and cow urine and some other local ingredients. Similarly they now used such local organic materials to keep away pests. This reduced their expenses significantly and also reduced drastically the fossil fuel burden of their farming.

Secondly, a relatively small part of the land was devoted to vegetable and fruit cultivation. Multi-layer vegetable garden makes it possible for them to grow about 15 vegetables in a small plot of land. In addition they have planted about 100 fruit trees, including 80 guava trees, 12 mango trees, 4 anvla trees, 4 lemon trees, 2 lichi trees and two berry trees.

Thirdly, Saroj has also started a nursery for providing plants of fruit trees to others.

At the same time they have continued to grow the cereal, legume, oilseed and millet crops they were growing earlier.

Saroj has one cow, one buffalo and seven goats (more goats are expected to be added soon). This provides the base for natural farming and adds to the diversity of family’s nutrition and income, including the capacity for meeting sudden expenses.

Thus Saroj has wisely and carefully made a package of changes which have on the one hand reduced her expenses significantly (by reducing dependence on externally purchased inputs) and on the other hand provided her a higher and continuing stream of income through crop diversification ( vegetables etc.) and livelihood diversification ( starting a nursery).

Thus she provides a model of climate resilient farming achieved on the basis of her small resources and their well-thought out, highly creative use (helped of course by a voluntary organization SRIJAN).

A great source of satisfaction for this family is that their food based on produce of natural farming provides better nutrition to the family and improves their health. It also gives great satisfaction that they are making available healthy food to others.

Saroj herself takes some of the farm produce, particularly vegetables, to the market regularly. “Traders and customers know that I am bringing very healthy vegetables so they compete with each other to buy my produce and I am able to sell my vegetables very quickly”, Saroj says with a broad smile. Saroj is also member and shareholder of the Ken Betwa Women Farmer Producer Company from where she is able to get good quality seeds and is also able to market several of her produce at a fair price.

Saroj says happily that her soil is showing significant signs of improvement. With soil-improvement (and its increased capacity to absorb carbon), with planting of so many trees and doing away with several inputs having a strong base in fossil fuels, Saroj contributes a lot to climate change mitigation.

Her contribution to climate adaptation is even more obvious, as diversification helps her to save some crops or produce even in times of adverse weather conditions while reducing dependence on external inputs helps her to reduce costs and avoid debts. Field bunds constructed properly help in water and soil conservation.

If Saroj can make such an important contribution while increasing her income and improving her livelihood prospects at the same time, why can’t millions of other farmers achieve similar results? Why are many of these farmers in the middle of a serious crisis?

In the middle of all the appreciation of the achievements of Saroj Kushwaha, let’s not forget that Saroj has a very limited and small resource base. Due to such small resource base, many small farmers, once they get trapped in unsuitable and expensive technologies and inputs spread by powerful interests, cannot recover easily, going from one crisis to another, including having to borrow at very high interest rates. Hence the government should devote much higher attention and allocate much more funds and resources for supporting in various ways such sustainable and ecologically protective farming practices.

[Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food, Protecting Earth for Children, Man over Machine and A Day in 2071.]

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Tribal Community’s Family Farm Shows the Way Forward with Highly Creative Natural Farming

Bharat Dogra

Maali Ram’s small home and farm may appear to be very ordinary to outsiders, but local people who know better are increasingly attracted by what this bheel (tribal community) farmer has achieved with the help of his wife Dulkibai and other family members. This is why they have been visiting this farm in growing numbers and in addition also inviting Maali Ram for training others in natural farming.

When I recently visited this farm located in Kataron Ka Khera village in Pratapgarh district (Rajasthan), what impressed me most was the very high level of creativity and intensity of involvement in his farming. He is all the time thinking of what he has done in any particular part of his farm, whether he could have done something better and what he’ll be doing next. He is so full of his creative ideas that he insists that you come to this nook and that corner of his farm to see and understand what he has been doing and what results he hopes to achieve. While speaking to him and being guided by him around his farm, I was reminded of what the American philosopher-farmer Wendell Berry has written about a good farmer—he wrote that a good farmer is working even when he is physically not on his farm, as he or she is always thinking of creative farming ideas.

On their small 3 bigha farm Maali Ram and Dulkibai have nearly 200 fruit and other trees, including guava, papaya, anvla, lemon, jackfruit and chandan (sandalwood) trees. Multi-layered pattern is used for growing over 15 vegetables. Natural farming methods are used in all this as well as grain, legume, oilseed and spice cultivation. Cows, bullocks, goats and poultry are integral parts of the farm and their excreta as well as other waste are used up while preparing manure and natural pest repellant. Emphasis is on one activity or resource being of assistance to some other activity or resource, and of waste being minimized and instead used as resource. A traditional well is just about able to meet the water needs of the farm, although the farm could make use of some more water if it was available.

Maali Ram’s creativity has come more into play since he started turning his 3 bigha farm into natural farming, one bigha at a time to avoid any sudden disruption. Alongside his shift towards natural farming also came multi-layer vegetable cultivation and fruit trees, making him very busy. But this is the kind of work that gives him more and more satisfaction, and after all the hard work, Maali Ram appears happy, not tired.

Many of these changes came due to the active presence in this and nearby villages of SRIJAN, a voluntary organization involved in supporting sustainable livelihoods that has been a source of help and encouragement for this enthusiastic farmer. However Maali Ram did not just take what was suggested to him, he also added a lot to this with his own creativity and experimentation.

At national and international levels, there is a lot of discussion on the crisis of farmers. But when we speak of solutions to emerge from this crisis, we can learn a lot from the experience of farmers like Maali Ram who have been able to secure satisfactory livelihood despite having very less land and a very low resource base to start with.

Actually Maali Ram has some additional land which is away from his home and also hilly. He hopes at a later stage to cultivate this land too in the same caring way as he has nurtured the land located closer to his home and hamlet.

Maali Ram says that his aim is to follow a path of farming which protects his and his family’s health, which protects the health of others and the health of soil. Following this path gives him happiness and satisfaction, he adds.

He expresses delight that his brother who lives close by has now agreed to traverse this same path. As though trying to convince me, he points to a path and tries to take me to his brother’s farm too. He is really very happy that his brother too has accepted the need for natural farming. He hopes that more and more farmers will come this way soon.

Although he does not say this specifically, and has probably not heard about this or has thought along these lines, the kind of farming he practices contributes to climate change mitigation as well as adaptation, and this increases its value all the more in these times of climate change and other related serious environmental problems. One can only hope that many more farmers will come the way of Maali Ram, further adding to his happiness and satisfaction.

[Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food, Man over Machine, When the Two Streams Met and A Day in 2071.]

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A Climate Resilient Model of Farming That Small Farmers Are Happy to Accept

Bharat Dogra

A very important aspect of achieving success in climate change mitigation and adaptation in the context of India’s villages is to evolve a climate resilient model which is happily accepted by ordinary farmers who are mostly small farmers. Once such acceptance is there, the climate resilient model can hope to spread quite widely.

Several organizations are trying in their own ways to evolve such models with varying degrees of success. In this context the efforts of Arunoday Sansthaan (A.S) in Bundelkhand region have been successful and encouraging. Its model has emphasized a combination of special emphasis on water conservation, natural farming, mixed and diversified farming, tree planting and giving special encouragement to women farmers.

This model of climate resilient farming has evolved in close cooperation with SRIJAN organization in recent years, although the efforts of AS in this direction were continuing well before this.

At an early stage of its efforts about two decades back AS as a young organization was confronted with the challenge of taking up the very difficult task of soil and water conservation in the dune like conditions of Kutra village (Mahoba district, UP). What is more, this was to be taken up on a low budget. When the young organization was able to complete this work to the satisfaction of experts as well as people on an exceptionally low budget by securing close community support, a bright future for the young organization was predicted by visitors.

The initial work offer that AS received for de-silting and cleaning of tanks was also on rather difficult terms. However when AS was able to give good results, this opened the doors for a much bigger assignment from the Neeti Ayog. Thus after a small beginning, AS has by now been involved with the de-silting and cleaning work of nearly 210 water tanks located in widely scattered villages, most of these being in Chhattarpur district (MP).

In addition AS has also made continuing efforts to improve the water situation in several villages by digging standardized ditches called dohas in water channels, repairing of existing structures like check dams, renovation of wells, digging of farm ponds and construction of field bunds. In some villages it has been involved more specifically in improving the drinking water supply.

The cause of soil and water conservation has also been helped by the planting of trees at community and individual levels, in Miyavaki pattern tapovans (or densely grown indigenous species tree gardens) as well as in small fruit orchards. According to Abhishek Mishra, director of Antyoday, so far about 2 lakh (200,000) trees have been planted in AS programs and projects with overall a good survival rate.

The fertile silt obtained from de-silting of tanks has also helped to give a good start to natural farming practices that have been widely spread by AS in recent years. These efforts have involved the training and motivation of farmers for natural farming, setting up of several natural farming centers for producing extra supply of bio fertilizers and pest repellants as well as providing know-how, setting up of tool banks for providing alternatives to more expensive and fuel guzzling farm machinery and making available good quality seeds. Demonstration plots have been set up to show the viability of natural farming and promote other good practices. The use of small parts of their farmland to grow multi-layer gardens and small orchards has been particularly popular with farmers. AS has extended help in the form of bamboos, ropes, seeds and plants for these.

This model has helped to improve income while at the same improving nutrition and health, particularly from good quality, healthy vegetables. While farming becomes more diverse, thereby reducing risk, the food basket is also more full of diverse nutrients for good health. At the same time soil health is improving all the time with bio fertilizers replacing chemical fertilizers and with the spread of mixed cropping and better crop rotations. What is particularly encouraging is that after some time several farmers are reporting higher productivity with reduced costs. While farmers like Ramesh Dada have emerged as much talked about model farmers, others like Mahendra Patel have returned to farming with new enthusiasm after having almost withdrawn from this once. Even in rural belts dismissed as being very backward, farmers like Keta Ahirwar and Bharat Bhushan are reporting inspiring success stories.

Goat based livelihood has been promoted and assisted among small farmers and landless households and local village women have been trained to provide basic veterinary care.

In a relatively new effort, Gaurihar women farmer producer company has been launched so that farmers have more income from value added processing activities like preparing multi-grain nutritious flour, daliya, papad (a snack food) and processing pulses in ready to cook form.

Thus a model of farm and related development is emerging in these villages of Bundelkhand region which combines concerns of improving climate response with concerns of many-sided improvements in rural livelihoods. This is a climate resilience that ordinary farmers are happy to accept.

[Bharat Dogra is a noted Indian journalist, author, and environmental activist known for his extensive writing on rural livelihoods, ecology, farmers’ struggles, and social justice. A longtime public intellectual and former Honorary Convener of the Campaign to Save Earth Now, he has written widely for independent media and authored numerous books on development and environmental issues.]