"The new ‘green revolution’ will not feed India" - SWAMINATHAN S. ANKLESARIA AIYAR
Matter of concern.. "The new ‘green revolution’ will not feed India" - SWAMINATHAN S. ANKLESARIA AIYAR
SWAMINOMICS
SWAMINATHAN S. ANKLESARIA AIYAR
Short Analysis: Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar critiques the current push for “natural farming” in India, arguing that it is a romanticized revival of ancient techniques that had failed before the Green Revolution. He highlights how the Green Revolution, despite its flaws, transformed India from a nation dependent on food aid to a self-sufficient, major food exporter. Aiyar expresses skepticism over the scalability of natural farming, pointing out examples where similar low-input methods, like those promoted by Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka and organic farming in Sri Lanka, resulted in either failure or niche success with low yields. He also emphasizes that farmers themselves, who have embraced higher-yielding methods like Green Revolution wheat and BT cotton, are the best judges of what works. The article ends on a cautious note, warning that while it's too soon to declare natural farming a failure, the signs are not promising.
Agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has proposed an increased subsidy of Rs 20,000 per hectare for farmers willing to shift from green revolution techniques to “natural farming”, also called zero-budget farming because it uses no purchased inputs. A National Mission on Natural Farming has also been launched with fanfare.
For now, the finance ministry has rejected the move to increase the subsidy from Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000. However, the hoopla over reviving ancient ‘natural’ techniques that left India hungry and humiliated in the 1960s, a disaster then rectified by the Green Revolution, amazes me. Many farm leaders and agricultural experts are singing the praise of natural farming but avoid speaking out in public.
Historically, farmers had no money to pay for chemical inputs. So, they developed what are now romantically revived today as “natural farming” — crop rotation with nitrogen-fixing plants, cow dung composting, and using cow dung and urine as insect and plant-based pesticides like neem, forest products as micronutrients. Within the limits of the old technology, these techniques were efficient. But when modern medicine and vaccination stoked a sharp population increase after 1920, food availability per capita fell steadily.
After Independence, India started getting US food aid in the 1950s to supplement local production. Dependence on food aid rose steadily. Then the twin droughts of 1965 and 1966 left India prostrate, starving, and begging the US for ever more grain. India lived a ship-to-mouth existence. A best-seller by Polock and Paddock said India was fundamentally unviable and should be left to starve, conserving food aid for viable countries.
Luckily, modern technology had just ushered in the green revolution. This required costly inputs — high-yielding seeds, chemical fertilisers, and tubewell irrigation. Rural roads, rural credit, and organised markets were needed as essential physical and financial infrastructure. The Green Revolution steadily lifted food production, and India became self-sufficient by the 1990s. Today it is a major food exporter. This is a huge success, yet it has had adverse side effects — excessive fertiliser run-off, excess use of pesticide use, destruction of aquifers through over-pumping, salinity through excess irrigation. But warts and all, the Green Revolution saved us from starvation and humiliating dependence on food aid. Why go back to techniques that resemble the failed ones of old?
Agriculturalist Subhash Palekar, father of Indian natural farming, claims he gets as high or higher yields than chemical techniques with no purchased inputs. This echoes similar claims made by people in other countries who reject chemical-based farming. Charismatic Japanese natural farmer Masanobu Fukuoka claimed he got great results without costly inputs. He got big headlines, but Japanese farmers could not replicate his results and rejected him. In the US, the Rodale Institute has long promoted low-input farming, yet has few followers.
India instituted Krishi Pandit awards in the 1960s for farmers getting the highest yields. The winners typically used natural farming and intensive acre or two and got huge yields. But they confessed it was impractical to scale this up. It was like winning the biggest pumpkin prize on Thanksgiving, farmers can get great results on one acre if all of them are as large as a car, which will astonish most Indians. But the pumpkin champions are quite clear that these cannot be scaled up. Nobody should accuse Palekar of false claims. Like the pumpkin champions of the US, he could indeed have got great results on a few hectares. But scaling up is another matter.
Organic farming, a close cousin of natural farming, has no high yields or competitive prices. In fact, Sri Lanka’s experiments with it led to a sharp drop in yields and a crisis in the agricultural sector. But organic claims to have better taste and health benefits, so consumers (in the West) are willing to pay fancy prices for organic products. India too has a niche market for organic products. But the niche is too small for the vast mass of farmers who feed India. The Punjab farmers who blockaded Delhi for a year in opposition to farm reforms were determined to continue with Green Revolution practices. They wanted higher subsidies for costly inputs but would not give up those inputs.
Farmers are the best judges. When the government introduced the Green Revolution wheat in the mid-1960s, farmers adopted the wheat variety with enthusiasm but rejected the rice variety. After a few years, the government introduced IR-8 from the International Rice Research Institute, which had succeeded abroad. But Indian farmers showed limited interest. Only with the launch of IR 20 in the mid-1970s did high-yielding rice take off in India.
More recently, BT cotton became a huge hit with farmers even though they had to pay fancy prices in the black market for a variety that was illegal at the time. If India’s farmers rush by the millions to natural farming, it is too early to call this a failure, but the signs are not promising.
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