Organic Farming in India : Present Status, Challenges and Technological Breakthrough

Summary

Relevance of organic farming towards crop sustainability and mitigation of climate change is well understood. But the organic movement in the backdrop of global agriculture is insignificant despite considerable effort during the last few years. India, an agriculture country, also faces several problems with respect to organic agriculture both at the production and marketing fronts. In this paper, points are discussed regarding the major bottlenecks towards large scale organic conversion as well as the major constraints faced by the Indian organic farmers. The need to bring forth an ecologically and economically sustainable organic pathway towards enabling higher adaptability among the farming community has also been highlighted. In the end, few case studies of sustainable organic farming under Inhana Rational Farming Technology have been discussed. The studies indicated the need for more and more innovative technologies towards development of plant health that is the pre- requisite for cost effective sustainable organic agriculture in a time bound manner.