Cafe Controversial: Do We Pursue or Abandon Organic Farming?
At ATREE@25, one of the public debates we are hosting focuses on conventional (Green Revolution-era) agriculture versus organic agriculture.
Nirmalya Chatterjee and Sandeep Hanchanale
The decades-old controversy on large-scale adoption of organic versus conventional (Green Revolution) agriculture recently received a boost in the subcontinent with the Sri Lankan food crisis. Sri Lanka suddenly adopted an organic production-only model for agriculture in April 2021. It immediately caused failure of the key rice and tea crops among others: the former affecting national food security and inflation, the latter impacting crucial export earnings.
The government reversed course eight months later with two seasons worth of crops suffering losses. The food crisis has added to extant difficulties of the economy, triggered by pandemic lockdowns, widespread government corruption and fiscal indiscipline.
However, it need not be a referendum on the efficacy of organic farming or a stamp of approval on the Green Revolution model. The reality of land degradation, decline in water, soil and biodiversity metrics, and shaky foundations of agricultural livelihoods across the globe are all scientifically well-documented, with climate-change pushing the wellbeing of millions towards a tipping point. It is time to get a more nuanced understanding of the conflicting paradigms.
At ATREE’s silver jubilee celebrations, we are dedicating one session to this debate. Kavitha Kuruganti, who works with the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA), Kisan Swaraj Network, and KM Sreekumar, Professor at Kerala Agricultural University, are the main speakers at this event.
ATREE’s soil expert and one of the authors of this blog post, Nirmalya Chatterjee, will discuss the role of soil in organic farming at the session. Director of CSEI-ATREE, Veena Srinivasan, will moderate the session.
It is one of three events in this format with one focusing on feeding stray animals and the other on tree planting.
In this blog post, we detail the dominant points-of-view around organic farming to help set the context for the debate. We are not making a for or against argument here. We are just setting the stage so that you too can be aware of the key points and actively participate in the event on August 19 at the JN Tata Auditorium, IISc Campus.
The level of external inputs vary
The conventional agriculture (Green Revolution) model has based itself on extensive intensification of inputs (mechanisation, fertilisers, micronutrients, synthetic pest and weed-control agents, energy, irrigation water, and targeted input- based seeds and cultivars) and crop monoculture for commodity level agro-industrial production.
The organic agriculture paradigm (irrespective of whether it is certified, uncertified or the traditional one) bases itself on a reduced, local and natural input model for cultivation of crops: with clearer focus on soil health, crop diversity, lower use of external inputs and generally stronger focus on smaller-scale and localised customization of production modes.
Impacts on people, the environment and productivity vary
Conventional agricultural production is also strongly associated with cheap food enabled by complex government policy and financial instruments providing subsidies to various players, to uphold the significant and increasingly volatile financial and environmental costs of production.
It is also implicated in degradation of soil, water and farming community health indicators and is responsible for climate change processes like fossil fuel use and land use change-driven release of greenhouse gases (both in scientific and popular media literature).
Recent push towards conversion to organic farming is being associated with inefficient production, increasing the likelihood of famine and food shortages and lowered food security at regional and national scales. Organic food production is being implicated in increase in food prices (though its current popularity and uptake doesn’t merit the case).
Organic farming, on the other hand, is clearly seen as being more just in terms of the leverage and return on investment it offers to the small-farmer and reducing their exposure to market and policy uncertainties and ballooning input costs. Organic production offers better protection of the soil-water continuum.
Public perception of the two vary
Conventional agriculture has helped large increases in crop productivity on a per acre basis for a single or a very small set of crops. The model uses irrigation (both long distance water-works and local fossil groundwater usage), extensive use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides (the latter often xenobiotic compounds — chemical substances that are not naturally produced).
Conventional agriculture is portrayed in the popular media as a guarantor of food security in middle- and low-income countries with large populations and supporting the mid-20th century population explosion.
Organic agriculture has been associated in the popular media with subsistence production in the traditional context. It is also portrayed as a significantly less productive form of agriculture albeit with a smaller dependance on external inputs, better suited to local contexts, and lower footprint in use of water, energy, financial resources and better sustainability indicators. Newer push towards organic production is associated with urban elitism and a ‘fad’ with unquantified ‘benefits’ to health at a significantly higher cost at the point of retail.
This is a complex subject about which reams have already been written; we’ve presented only a quick summary of some of the main points.
The Sri Lanka example we began with offers important lessons for other countries in the Global South. There are also examples that proponents of organic farming present as ‘success stories’ such as the 10-year study in China, as a part of which 21 million farmers were trained on how to better manage soil, water, and fertiliser. The programme is purported to have resulted in an 11% yield increase for maize, wheat, and rice, and a 15–18% reduction in nitrogen fertiliser use.
For either intervention, it is critical to be mindful of the economic, political, and social contexts and plan a viable transition with both farm side and market side transitions.
Edited by Kaavya Kumar
Join us at ATREE@25 on August 18 and 19 at the JN Tata Auditorium, IISc, Bengaluru. Check out the full schedule here and register: https://www.atree.org/atree25program
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