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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | A New Paradign for Indian Agriculture: From Agroindustry to Agroecology (2022) -Neelam Patel, Bruno Dorin, and Ranveer Nagaich
A New Paradign for Indian Agriculture: From Agroindustry to Agroecology (2022) -Neelam Patel, Bruno Dorin, and Ranveer Nagaich

A New Paradign for Indian Agriculture: From Agroindustry to Agroecology (2022) -Neelam Patel, Bruno Dorin, and Ranveer Nagaich

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published Published on Apr 26, 2022   modified Modified on Apr 26, 2022

-NITI Aayog Working Paper, ISBN: 978-81-953811-7-3

Abstract -  The importance of agriculture in an economy usually declines as it climbs the development ladder. Raising agriculture productivity has been known to be an important precursor. Labour productivity in agriculture can either be increased by higher land productivity or higher land availability per farmer and mechanisation. In India, however, the dramatic increase in land productivity through industrial farming has caused severe environmental damage and did not boost agricultural labour productivity. Going ahead, India faces the challenges of both increasing farm productivity and increasing sustainability and resilience to climate change. These policy goals have the potential of creating a trade-off for policymakers. By showing that India’s path of structural transformation is unsustainable, this paper calls for a new paradigm in Indian agriculture through the adoption of agroecological principles at scale.

Policy Implications -  Based on the discussions in this paper, a broad set of policy directions can be distilled to provide direction for further academic research to fine tune the policy recommendations. At the outset it must be recognised that any paradigm shift is likely to cut across various functional areas. Furthermore, these implications represent the starting area for policy deliberations, not the final policy recommendations themselves. Overall, the implications for policy have been designed on the basis of the goals of both increasing productivity and ensuring sustainability.

1. FROM FOOD TO FOOD SYSTEMS - India has focused on improving access to cereals and achieved significant results. In the quest to double farmers income, diversification of farm incomes has been cited as an important strategy. With intercropping and multi-cropping at its core, natural farming could scientifically contribute to the solution. There are also calls to diversify the diets provided by the National Food Security Act and the Mid-Day Meal Scheme (TCI, 2020). India’s experience is testament to the fact that public procurement can incentivise production of certain crops. Public procurement in the initial years can provide as an incentive towards diversification of farm produce. Preference to procurement from Natural Farming practising farmer organisations can be an incentive to popularise natural farming. 

2. OVERHAUL OF INCENTIVES AND SUBSIDIES - As per the Union Budget 2020-21, Rs. 79,998 crores were spent on fertiliser subsidies by the Union Government in 2019-20. In comparison, the entire budget for the Department of Agriculture Research & Education (DARE) stood at approximately Rs. 7,500 crores in 2019-20. Similarly, the total transfers to States for agriculture extension services stood at Rs. 940 crores. Many state governments also provide power subsidies to farmers, making the input subsidy bill even bigger in reality. The transfer to states as part of the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY), was Rs. 300 crores in 2019-20. Therefore, funding for Natural Farming will have to be scaled up substantially. To give a larger push to agroecology, PKVY can be reoriented as a Central Sector Scheme, with funding scaling up as the area under Natural Farming increases. Promoting natural farming will reduce the reliance on inputs and hence the large subsidy bill for fertilisers, electricity, water and credit. This cost saving can then be translated to higher allocations under PKVY. 

3. NEW MONITORING AND EVALUATION FRAMEWORK - A set of indicators, with clearly defined inputs, outputs and expected outcomes needs to be developed (Frison, 2016) to measure the performance of states. Funding allocation to the scaled up PKVY can be linked to the performance of states on this set of indicators. Third party validation of data should also be promoted, in partnership with either the private sector or the civil society. This will ensure robustness and transparency of data on the portal. These indicators are in turn bound to be in synergy with the sustainable development goals as well. Development of the initial framework could perhaps be undertaken by the Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office (DMEO), NITI Aayog. The framework can then be finalised in consultation with the relevant ministries and state governments.   

4. DOCUMENTATION OF NATURAL FARMING PRACTICES IN INDIA - As mentioned earlier, agroecological approaches are highly context specific. Therefore, there is no one system of Natural Farming that can be propagated all across India. The need of the hour is to document and widely disseminate these practices, based on local conditions. At the same time, there is a need to develop some overarching principles, as the FAO HLPE Report has. Identification of these principles will also aid in the certification process, which is critical in commanding higher prices in terminal markets. Standards also need to de developed to grade and assay produce from natural farming. 

5. FARMER HANDHOLDING - Since Natural Farming is a knowledge-intensive system, co-training and co-educating farmers on the benefits of agroecological approaches remains the key challenge. The success of Andhra Pradesh in popularising Natural Farming was in part due to long-term handholding of farmers. Government support and advocacy was critical as well. Therefore, increasing extension budgets, and reorienting extension services to promote Natural Farming is the need of the hour. The central government can take the lead in this aspect, through making PKVY a Central Sector Scheme to develop extension systems to popularise Natural Farming a cornerstone of the efforts. The role of farmer producer organisations (FPOs), self-help groups (SHGs) will be critical in these efforts as well. 

6. PARTNERSHIPS WITH THE CIVIL SOCIETY AND PRIVATE SECTOR - Partnering with the Civil Society would help in reaching farmers for training and capacity building. These partnerships could also result in enabling a robust monitoring and evaluation framework as well. The private sector can have a role to play here as well. Whilst India lags behind in food processing, a large part of industrial agriculture products feed the food processing industry. The requirements of such industries are therefore based on the prevalent system of production. Partnering with the private sector, to develop processable varieties that can be used as inputs in the food processing industry, keeping in mind the principles of natural farming is another area to explore. Processed products based on organic inputs sell at substantial premiums. 

7. COLLECTIVISATION OF FARMERS - Another way to reach a large group of farmers can be through collectivising them into producer organisations or cooperatives. The Government of India is already pushing for the creation of farmer collectives at a large scale. This push can be effectively leveraged to popularise Natural Farming. The Andhra Pradesh model showed that women organised through self-help groups (SHGs) enabled collective action and peer learning. These farmer collectives can then be connected to terminal markets, or partners in the food processing industry, as described above. This will boost their bargaining power.   

8. TRANSFER PAYMENTS FOR ECOLOGICAL SERVICES RENDERED - As stated by Dorin et al. (2013, 2021), for agroecology to be popularised, farmers need to be compensated not just for their produce, but also the ecological services they render. India already has a mechanism to directly deliver cash to farmers’ bank accounts. This system can be leveraged to transfer benefits directly to farmers for the ecological services they render. At present, there exists no such system where direct payments are being made to farmers for the ecological services they render. While there have been some experiments, they usually exist in a single domain, eg. water management or are limited in scale. For instance, in the PES schemes reviewed by Drucker & Ramirez (2020), payments were made for biodiversity conservation, and limited to a single crop. Similarly, Von Thaden et al. (2021), explore the effectiveness on payments for hydrological services in Velacruz, Mexico. Jayachandran et. al (2017) explore the effectiveness of PES to conserve forests on private land in Uganda. While they find the payments reduced deforestation and degradation, such payments have not yet been demonstrated at scale. In the Indian context, a case has been made by Devi et al. (2021). Venkatachalam & Balooni (2018) also make a case for PES for participatory water management in Tamil Nadu. In terms of measuring and valuing ecosystem services, the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) in March 2021 adopted the System of Environmental Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA-EA) framework. In India, preliminary work on environmental accounting has been initiated by the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI), under the Natural Capital Accounting & Valuation of Ecosystem Services (NCAVES) project. The first report was published in January 2021. Based on the literature and the data available, moving towards PES in agriculture in India still remains some time away. However, it may be prudent to explore the contours of such a system, such as acceptable indicators, data required, payment level (farmer, by farm etc.). For instance, if payments are made by practice (eg. natural farming), then mechanisms of valuing these services still need to be evolved. Since the work still at a nascent stage, both in terms of global practices and data available, ideating on such a system will be an exercise that involves economists, statisticians, ecologists, policymakers, and other stakeholders. 

9. INVESTMENTS IN THE COLD CHAIN - Regardless of the way it is produced, post-harvest management is critical as well. Annual wastage in excess of Rs. 90,000 crores have been estimated as a result of inefficient postharvest management. Development of infrastructure at the farmgate, pre-processing facilities which are then linked to packhouses and cold storages, is critical in linking farmers to terminal markets, be they retail or exports. Despite claims that agroecological systems exhibit shorter value chains and produce is distributed locally, there still exists a requirement of an end-to-end cold chain to connect farmers to terminal markets. The Government of India has recently launched a Rs. 1 lakh crore Agriculture Infrastructure Fund, for development of infrastructure close to the farmgate, which can be leveraged by producer organisations. 

10. LEVERAGING FRONTIER TECHNOLOGIES - The rising demand for organic products and the premiums paid for them are cited as a major reason for a shift towards organic or Natural Farming. However, without traceability and certification, this market cannot be served by most of India’s farmers. A nationwide blockchain for quality certification and traceability may help solve this problem if such a blockchain does not consume too much fossil energy. This is another avenue for partnerships with the civil society and private sector. The Participatory Guarantee Scheme (PGS) for certification could be leveraged here. This is just one example of the potential frontier technologies carry. Further research and collaborations are needed to examine the use of such technologies in the popularisation of Natural Farming in India.  

Conclusion 

This paper has shown that the path of structural transformation India has taken is unsustainable. Land constraints are hampering India’s agriculture labour productivity growth rates, leading to widening income gaps and greater inequality. Intensification of inputs has seen yields in India grow manifold over the past decades, allowing India to achieve cereal security and maintain sufficient buffer stocks for time of need. However, the intensification of inputs has led to severe environmental challenges. This creates a trade-off between the goals of increasing productivity and enhancing sustainability and resilience. In order to ensure the long-term health of India’s agriculture sector and indeed, the economy, a new paradigm for agriculture in India has been mooted in this paper. 

This new paradigm would embrace the principles of agroecology. While there is no definitive set of practices, there exist three characteristics which can be identified as agroecological: (i) reliance on ecological processes rather than purchased inputs; (ii) equitable, environmentally friendly, locally adapted and controlled and (iii) they adopt a systems approach. This agroecological approach can be seen in many parts of India. Natural farming in India is being promoted as the Bharatiya Prakritik Krishi Paddhati (BPKP) Programme. This programme seeks to promote agroecology based diversified farming system which integrates crops, trees and livestock with functional biodiversity and reducing a reliance on externally purchased inputs. The system is largely based on on-farm biomass recycling, stressing biomass mulching, use of on-farm cow dung-urine formulation and soil aeration. Clearly, this is in line with the characteristics of agroecological approaches discussed earlier. The need of the hour is to scale up such initiatives across India. 

Agroecology carries with it the potential to convert this apparent trade-off in policy goals to mutually compatible goals. For this policy action will be critical. Extension services will need to be revamped, subsidies and incentives will need to be overhauled. A new monitoring and evaluation mechanism will be needed to track outcomes, defined in terms of both sustainability and productivity. Natural farming practices across India will need to be documented, verified and spread to the farm level using revamped extension services. Partnerships with both the civil society and private sector will be critical in spreading Natural Farming across India. In order to make natural farming more remunerative for small and marginal farmers, transfer payments for ecological services provided by farmers can be considered. However, certification will be critical in this endeavour. This relates to the goal of documentation and verification of practices as natural, as a set of practices must be identified prior to labelling a farm as natural. Public procurement may have an important role to play in demand generation, especially in the initial years. 

At the same time, some existing policy thrusts must continue. Collectivisation of farmers through producer organisations is one thrust. Financial inclusion another. Investments across the cold-chain remain critical in connecting farmers to terminal markets, be they natural farmers or ‘modern’ ones. More research is needed in distilling actionable policy recommendations for a complete paradigm shift as mooted by this paper. The policy implications derived in this paper can serve as a starting point for policy deliberations. 

This paper has established that not only is India’s structural transformation incomplete, but it is on an unsustainable path. A paradigm shift is needed in India shifting towards agroecological principles. This would require a move away from the input intensification based agriculture in India today. It would also need a recognition that farm sizes in India are unlikely to get bigger, unless there is strong political will towards land consolidation. Rather than seeing our small landholdings as a weakness, policymakers must seek to leverage this into an opportunity, especially as small farms have been shown to be more productive and receptive to change. However, this shift must ensure protection of farmers’ incomes, along with long-term handholding, to ensure the long-term health of India’s agriculture sector as well as the economy.

Please click here to access NITI Aayog Working Paper 'A New Paradigm for Indian Agriculture from Agroindustry to Agroecology'.

NITI Aayog Working Paper, released in 2022, https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2022-04/Working_Paper_on_Agriculture_With_Cropmarks_060402022.pdf


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