March 31, 2018
Agriculture
Can India Become The Agricultural Superpower She Once Was?
In my previous post, I wrote about the potential of microbes to change the face of the agricultural industry.
A critical player in the health of soil ecosystems, microbes are responsible for nitrogen fixation and phosphate solubilisation actions that nourish crops.
With the emergence of technology, scientists have developed sustainable products, such as biofertilizers and biopesticides, that enhance both food quality and security.
Organic farming, which essentially returns to traditional farming practices, will not only nourish us with high-nutritional food but also protect our planet for future generations.
Throughout history, India has been a predominantly agrarian economy with the majority of its population engaged in agricultural enterprise.
Farmers were the backbone of the Indian economy, and as such, they always merited special status in our socio-cultural narratives.
While agriculture’s share in India’s economy has declined progressively to less than 15% due to the high growth rates of the industrial and services sectors, the sector’s importance in India’s economic and social fabric extends well beyond economic indicators.
Approximately one-third of our population remains engaged in agricultural and allied activities.
It is also the only segment of the economy where the contribution of women, as a percentage of hours contributed, utterly overshadows that of men.
India is the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses, and spices, and has the world’s largest cattle herd (buffaloes), as well as the largest area under wheat, rice, and cotton cultivation.
It is the second-largest producer of wheat, rice, cotton, sugarcane, tea, farmed fish, goat meat, fruit, and vegetables.
Between 1965 and 2011, our total food production grew by over 230 percent.
It is ironic, then, that despite agriculture being one of the primary professions in India, we are not able to produce sufficient food for all our citizens, particularly those from the poorer strata of society.
Many blame our ever-increasing population and illiteracy for this, something I am deeply conflicted about.
India has always been blessed with some of the most fertile soils in the world.
Our diversity of climate allows our farmers to grow up to four crops a year in certain parts of the country.
We genuinely have the most abundant biodiversity in the world.
Why then should anyone in this country face malnutrition or hunger?
The last half a century, since the Green Revolution, has seen our traditional farming practices cede way to dependence on chemical fertilizers, industrial agriculture, and a systematic move away from biodiverse agriculture in favour of genetically modified ‘high-yield’ cash crop varieties.
Over the last 50 years, successive generations of farmers have, through no fault of their own, systematically lost the wealth of knowledge that once made us an agrarian powerhouse.
Our farmers were brilliant breeders and knew how to coax abundance from the soil.
Our agrobiodiversity was a result of many centuries of hard work by farmers, who experimented, selected, and propagated desirable nutritional traits in the crops they grew.
Our rich, biodiverse soil has degraded over time due to unchecked chemical and industrial farming, coupled with large-scale deforestation, polluted water resulting from industrialization, depleting water resources, and an ever-shrinking land bank in favor of urbanization.
Soil infertility is a widespread problem today.
An agricultural predisposition towards extremely intensive farming practices has also contributed to the degradation of our soil.
Farmers from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Assam to Gujarat cultivate genetically modified varieties of cash crops to achieve higher yields.
These GMO crops have largely replaced our traditional varieties.
India traditionally had 1500 different varieties of cotton, yet 95 percent of the cotton planted today is GMO Bt Cotton.
I believe that only a return to our age-old farming practices will put an end to this catastrophe.
Let’s take systematic steps towards sustainable farming techniques and seed freedom, with re-education and proper management.
We can reclaim our floral and faunal biodiversity and lead the charge of reshaping the agrarian landscape sustainably.
Sustainable farming, or farming as we knew it half a century ago, is a combination of well-balanced agronomic practices, local resources, crop rotation, the use of biofertilizers, and biopesticides to enhance soil fertility.
Moreover, it shows better results than industrial and chemical farming techniques. Our ecosystems are protected from the harmful effects of hazardous chemicals.
Crops are more nutritious, and we, as a result, are healthier.
Sustainable agriculture preserves and even enriches agro-diversity at the field, farm, and ecosystem levels!
Instead of chemical protection, it uses bio-fertilisers and bio-pesticides made from natural resources, primarily living microorganisms.
Once biofertilizers are applied to seeds, plant surfaces, or the soil, microbes begin to colonize the rhizosphere, the area surrounding the roots of the plant.
As plants grow, microbes from biofertilizers promote plant development by increasing the supply and availability of essential nutrients to the host plant.
Biofertilisers enhance the quality of soil through natural processes, such as solubilising phosphate, fixing nitrogen, and stimulating plant growth by synthesising growth-promoting factors, including plant hormones.
Biofertilisers and biopesticides also reduce the financial burden of chemical fertilisers, as they are comparatively less expensive.
The use of microbes is not limited to enhancing growth; they can also be used to protect plants from various infections and climatic stress.
I have mentioned the symbiotic association that saves the plant from dehydration in my last post.
Technology today enables us to use a wide range of microbe-plant interactions to provide immunity from stress, as well as pathogens, to the growing plants.
Microbes indirectly influence the climatic flexibility of plants and therefore offer plants fitness by harmonising their growth and defense responses.
Additionally, plants can manipulate bacteria to help them thrive in stressful environments.
Quorum Sensing is another fantastic use of microbes to improve agricultural output. Bacteria in catastrophic conditions release and react to the chemicals they secrete.
These chemicals guide them towards each other, and eventually, they form a protective structure known as biofilms.
These biofilms are stronger than planktonic cells, as the bacteria living within them are protected by polymeric substances secreted by the bacteria themselves.
The successful establishment of working biofilms of beneficial bacteria is a boon to agriculture.
Bacteria can sense their environment and detect nutrient deficiencies in the soil, which in turn stimulates them to secrete the specific nutrient they need.
Secondly, the working biofilm secretes numerous chemicals into the soil, including acids, which retard the growth of pathogens and reduce the risk of plant infections.
High acidity also kicks off the production of Indole Acetic Acid, a substance that stimulates plant growth.
While sustainable farming is often viewed as a fad today, it has its detractors; however, the results speak for themselves.
People worldwide are now actively seeking out organic produce. Restaurants like Blue Hill Farm are building their business models around the Farm-to-Table concept.
I strongly recommend watching the Chef’s Table episode featuring Chef Dan Barber on Netflix (Season 1, Episode 2) to understand the impact of empowering farmers.
In India, we need more voices raised; we need more people consciously seeking out organic produce grown by farmers who are looking to learn from the past so that we can thrive in the future.
Going back to our organic farming roots, however, is not a choice that farmers can make alone.
This is a choice that needs to be enabled for them by governments and consumers.
For us as consumers, making the switch is actually quite easy.
Weigh the perceived higher costs of organic produce today against the real costs of impaired health for you and your family over the years and generations, and organic produce suddenly doesn’t seem so expensive.
For governments, this will be a little more complex.
First, they need to shed populist, politically convenient options such as waiving off farmer debts.
Instead, they need to address the cause of the debt, which is dependence on chemicals and modern farming techniques.
They must invest in teaching and propagating good and healthy farming methodologies. Invest in rebuilding the biodiversity of each of our regions.
Reject the over-lobbied GMO seed variants and invest in research on ideal crop variants for our regional and climatic conditions.
Empower farmers with the results of this research. Reduce the impact of urbanization on farmland.
Reduce the impact of deforestation on our waters. Invest in cleaning our rivers and water bodies.
Sure, in the near term, waiving off farmer debts might seem like a good solution, but are they really?
Waivers do not include agricultural labourers, marginal and small landholders.
For medium- and large-scale farmers, there is instant temporary relief from debt, but the subsidy largely fails to contribute to their long-term welfare.
Then there is the environmental impact to consider, as subsidies encourage farmers to consume more electricity and flood the farms with excess water, leading to excess soil salinity.
All of these steps above might appear fraught with risk – financial and political – but even governments are comprised of people who have future generations to consider.
We need to make them aware of their obligations to those who will inherit this planet from us.
Do we want to leave for them barren lands and rice that can only taste one way ever?
Or do we want to leave a rich, fertile India where, as the song goes, mere desh ki dharti sona ugle, ugle hire moti?
This post first appeared on LinkedIn
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