To feed the growing Indian population in early 1960’s, there was urgent need to increase productivity of food grains, for which besides introduction of new high yielding varieties, external input like chemical fertilizers, insecticides, and pesticides were used indiscriminately. This package of practice gave birth to the so-called “GREEN REVOLUTION”. Of course as a result of this green revolution, India could increase the production manifold i.e. against a food grain production of 50.82 million Tons during 1950-51; we are now producing more than 332 million tons (2023-24).
The level of increase in external input is evident from the fact that against a consumption of 3.05 Lakh MT of NPK during 1959-60, the total consumption of fertilizer products increased to 30.64 million MT in 2023-24. India consumes around 35.78 million tonnes of urea annually, of which almost 70% is domestically produced and the rest is imported from other countries. Similarly the consumption of pesticides in India increased several hundred folds from 154 MT in 1953-54 to 54,121 MT in 2015-16 with the Green Revolution being a major contributor. However, since then, the consumption steadily is dropping because of the ban and restriction on the use of organochlorine pesticides and with the introduction of the Integrated Pest Management practices.
It is worth to mention here that due to increase in use of external input, not only the cost of production has gone high but also it has generated some adverse impact on soil, plant and animal health. Insect resistance to pesticides is a heritable change in a pest population’s sensitivity, leading to repeated failure of pesticides to control the pest. This occurs when insects with genes conferring resistance survive pesticide exposure and pass on those genes, leading to a population with increased resistance over time. Therefore, resistance to pesticides is now known in over 504 insect and mite pests in comparison to only 7 insect pests in 1954. Increased use of chemicals also enhanced the demand of water for irrigation resulting lowering of underground water table. The underground water has also got polluted due to leaching of salts. The visible adverse impact could be seen on soil health as the soil-organisms are almost lost, human and animal health has also got adversely affected due to intake of food grains, vegetables, fruits treated with insecticides and pesticides. The contaminated/polluted underground water has also caused many anomalies.
The major questions and criticism of current agriculture practices are
1. It damages soil structure.
2. It damages environment.
3. It creates potential health hazards in food.
4. That it has brought about a reduction in food quality
5. That it is an energy intensive system.
6. That it involves intensive animal production system, which are ethically unacceptable.
7. That it is economically costly and increasingly so to the farmers.
So environmental pollution including problems associated with system ecology and public health safety as a result of increase use of artificial chemicals need to be addressed immediately for sustainable management of natural resources, bio diversity conservation, safe food production etc.
In the hilly areas of India, Uttarakhand in particular, the agriculture by default is organic in nature for reasons, that due to mountainous topography and lack of irrigation facilities use of artificial chemicals (fertilizers/insecticides/pesticides etc.) is almost negligible. Animal husbandry and agriculture is the main source of livelihood. Animal dung is the main input used in growing agricultural crops, but due to lack of proper composting methodology, the animal dung used is not fully decomposed and hence they do not get full benefit of it in improving soil texture, providing nutrients to plants, improving water holding capacity etc. Not only per unit production and productivity of agricultural crops is low but also milk yield as local breed of cows/buffalos are reared, which are fed on wild grass/fodder that are not rich in nutrition. In the hilly areas there is need to replace the traditional genetic material of agricultural crops with new high yielding ones, need to improve the local breed of cow/buffalo/sheep/goat, need to demonstrate various methodologies of compost preparation, need to demonstrate various water harvesting, soil moisture conservation techniques, need to provide various income generation options. The agricultural produce of hilly areas though by default is organic in nature but for want of proper knowledge about organic standards, certification procedure (NPOP/PGS-India etc.), documentation of production process and market linkages, the farmers are not able to market their surplus produce as organic. Though there are cluster of villages, where sizeable spices are grown for generations but the producers neither are able to get befitting prices for their produce as they continue to grow old traditional varieties that have become obsolete in terms of production due to continuous inbreeding and lack of knowledge of plant protection measures, nor they could establish any food-processing units for value addition. It is not that the farmers are not aware about the facts but due to hilly topography, production is very meager and even not sufficient for round the year family consumption even in some areas surplus production is available but due to lack of rural roads it adds to increased cost and drudgery. For these reasons most of the youths from hills have migrated to the plain areas in search of livelihood. The entire pressure of agriculture, rearing children and cattle is being shouldered by leftover women. In the hilly areas there is tremendous family pressure on housewife, the daily routine is so heavy that rarely she gets time to relax. Her daily routine starts with getting up early in the morning, entering to Gowshala (Cattle shed) to take out animal dung and to milk cows/buffalo, going to fetch drinking water from a far off distance, cooking breakfast for her family, going to forest to collect fodder for milch animals, preparing children for school, going to field to perform cultural operations like weeding, sowing etc., cooking lunch for family, going to forest to collect fire wood, washing utensils, going to Gowshala to milk cows/buffalo, preparing dinner for family etc. She has also to hand grind wheat and thrash paddy for family meal at least once a week. Not only this, during sowing season she has to carry either on her back or head 30-40 kg load of animal dung to her fields, which are far away from her house that too not in one cluster, the major issue that need to be addressed by the govt. is Check Bandi (Consolidation of Fields). Most of the animal dung taken to fields is not fully decomposed, so it further adds to her drudgery as the weight could have been reduced to 25-30% by fully decomposing it. Though Govt. has made some efforts to address these burning issues but Govt. has its limitations like scarcity of extension workers, and even if sufficient staff is available but they are reluctant to visit those villages not on road heads. To address some of the above issues, and to supplement the efforts of Govt. Foundation for Organic & Rural Development (FORD) was conceived.