{"id":279,"date":"2011-05-11T21:22:18","date_gmt":"2011-05-12T01:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/more-profit-and-higher-yields-through-organic-farming-in-india.html"},"modified":"2025-06-13T20:01:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T00:01:35","slug":"more-profit-and-higher-yields-through-organic-farming-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/more-profit-and-higher-yields-through-organic-farming-in-india.html","title":{"rendered":"More profit and higher yields through organic farming in India"},"content":{"rendered":"

Increase your income and your yields with traditional farming methods?\r\nThat’s what’s happening in India.\r\n

\r\nNishika Patel blogged 11 May 2011 in The Guardian,\r\n\r\nOrganic farming \u2013 India’s future perfect?<\/a>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIndia’s struggling farmers are starting to profit from a budding interest\r\nin organic living. Not only are the incomes of organic farmers soaring\r\n\u2013 by 30% to 200%, according to organic experts \u2013 but their yields\r\nare rising as the pesticide-poisoned land is repaired through natural\r\nfarming methods.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nHow did this happen?\r\n

\r\nOrganic farming only took off in the country about seven years\r\nago. Farmers are turning back to traditional farming methods for a number\r\nof reasons.\r\n

\r\nFirst, there’s a 10% to 20% premium\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\nto be earned by selling organic\r\nproducts abroad and in India’s increasingly affluent cities, a move\r\ntowards healthy living and growing concern over toxic foods and\r\nadulteration plaguing the food market.\r\n

\r\nSecond, the cost of pesticides and fertilisers has shot up and the\r\nloans farmers need to buy expensive, modified seed varieties are pushing\r\nmany into a spiral of debt. Crippling debt and the burden of loans are\r\ntrriggering farmer suicides across the country, particularly in the\r\nVidarabha region of Maharashtra. Organic farming slashes cultivation\r\nand input costs by up to 70% due to the use of cheaper, natural products\r\nlike manure instead of chemicals and fertilisers.\r\n

\r\nThird, farmers are suffering from the damaging effects of India’s\r\ngreen revolution, which ushered in the rampant use of pesticides and\r\nfertilisers from the 1960s to ensure bumper yields and curb famine and\r\nfood shortages. Over the decades, the chemicals have taken a toll on\r\nthe land and yields are plunging.\r\n

\r\n“Western, modern farming has spoiled agriculture in the country. An\r\noveruse of chemicals has made land acidic and hard, which means it\r\nneeds even more water to produce, which is costly,” says Narendra Singh\r\nof Organic India. “Chemicals have killed the biggest civilisation in\r\nagriculture \u2013 earthworms, which produce the best soil for growth.”\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nRemember, so-called “conventional” agriculture only goes back about\r\nfifty years, when it was brought to us by Monsanto and other poison dealers.\r\n

\r\nTime to go back to the future, to real traditional agriculture,\r\nexcept now we also have fifty years of research in how to do that better,\r\nfor example with companion crops.\r\n

\r\nIf they can do it in India, we can do it here.\r\nJust say no to no-till and pesticides.\r\nAnd this:\r\n

\r\nKavita Mukhi organises a weekly organic farmers’ market in Mumbai, where\r\nproducers sell direct to consumers. She is trying to boost awareness\r\nabout organic food. “The only way you hear about it is if you stumble on\r\nan organic shop,” she says. “There’s no widespread marketing or awareness\r\nof the benefits.”\r\n

\r\nOnce the awareness increases, organic agriculturalists believe more\r\nfarmers will join the movement because it’s favourable to small\r\nfarmers. They already have the cows and buffalos needed to recycle\r\nbiomass at the farm level, which is, essentially, the foundation of\r\norganic farming.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nCome to\r\n\r\nDowntown Valdosta Farm Days<\/a>!\r\n

\r\n-jsq\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Increase your income and your yields with traditional farming methods? That’s what’s happening in India. Nishika Patel blogged 11 May 2011 in The Guardian, Organic farming \u2013 India’s future perfect? India’s struggling farmers are starting to profit from a budding interest in organic living. Not only are the incomes of organic farmers soaring \u2013 by […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,8,39,834,40,41,42,373,374],"tags":[2761,836,838,776,544,2763,679,839,835,15,2822,173,620,837],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-agrochemicals","category-community","category-deep-till","category-economy","category-food","category-food-and-drink","category-no-till","category-plowing","tag-agriculture","tag-conventional-farming","tag-deep-till-2","tag-downtown-valdosta-farm-days","tag-fertilizer","tag-glysophate","tag-green-revolution","tag-herbicides","tag-india","tag-monsanto","tag-no-till","tag-organic","tag-pesticides","tag-traditional-farming"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-4v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9783,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions\/9783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}