Organic Farming: Growing Safe Food While Preserving Soil and Ecosystems

Chemical pollution in agricultural crops has assumed to be an alarming situation in many countries now and India is no exception in this farming procedure. After independence, population in India has made an astonishing upsurge so as to attain about 20 percent in the world but production of food crops had not proportionately increased till the first part of 1960s in the country. There was fearful apprehension that the country had again been marching ahead to face another famine as happened in the year, 1943.

During this critical period, the miraculous invention of the crop scientist in Mexico, Dr. Norman Borlaug brought about an astounding turnover of the situation. By making hybridization in wheat crop, he gained success to produce such varieties of wheat whose productive capacity had gone exceedingly high.

However, in the light of the fact that rice remains to be the most staple food crop in the South Asian, south-east Asian and eastern countries inchiding India, similar hybridization procedures were undertaken by the rice breeders in these countries. Their researches on breeding had given birth to production of rice varieties whose yield performance had remarkably excelled productiveness of the traditional cultivars. Owing to large-scale cropping of those varieties of rice, farming in India had been averted and thus, Malthusian Positive Check failed to occur in this country.

It has been observed that population in India which was recorded as 361,044,000 in 1951 had stepped up to 548,160,000 in 1971 and to 1,210,726,932 in the year, 1991. On the other hand, production of food crops recorded as 55 million tons in 1949-50 augmented to 89, 176, 184-and 275.68 million tonnes, respectively in the years, 1964-65, 1990-91, 1993-94 and 2016-17.

The causative factors for such high yield performance of crops could be attributed largely due to excessively high application of fertilizers, although application of chemical pesticides and irrigation also played part as other inputs.

However, despite the indomitable effect played by fertilizers in boosting up production of agricultural crops in India, the fact could be brought to notice that whenever any plant happens to come in contact with any chemical, whether it is a fertilizer, or a pesticide, it is absorbed by the plant and then to migrated, other parts of the plant body, including those parts which constitute the consumable parts to the human beings. These chemicals either undergo chemical disintegration or may exist as such and the portions that are left in the plant body are considered as residues.

The residual parts of the chemicals enter into the body of the persons who consume the chemically treated crop plants. The question is, whether the chemicals affect health of the human beings shook the attention of the health scientists. The experimental findings in this respect have provided substantial evidence that in most cases, the chemicals render harmful effects to them.

However, apart from rendering health hazards, application of chemical inputs in growing crops is known to cause serious adversity to the physical and chemical condition of the soil. Over and above, undesirable deviation in the locality is also set at naught by indiscriminate and too much application of chemical agro-inputs when done over the years.

In view of the above context, whether raising of food crops could be accomplished without use of extraneous chemicals drew serious attention of the crop scientists. This novel concept had been the basis to the alternative farming procedure, popularly termed as farming or organic agriculture.

Definition of Organic Farming

By definition, organic farming is a cropping procedure, in other words, a method of agricultural crop production which is performed, keeping in view the basis of renewal and encouragement of eco-environmental structure. In accordance with, this crop farming procedure is absolutely based on rigid biological standpoint and thereby, rules out application of any type of synthetic chemical from extraneous source druring its operation. In clear apprehension therefore, this implies that in this alternative system of farming procedure, agricultural chemicals which comprise chemical agro-inputs such as fertilizers, chemical pesticides, weedicides, plant growth regulators or other chemicals are strictly debarred in following up of this agro-practice.

Concept

Majority of the people are strongly in support of who organic farming holds the view that the term, organic farming should be restricted to such a system of growing agricultural crops in which, any type of inorganic chemical should not be applied from external source in its cropping. However, it may be brought to notice that another section of organic farming upholders is of the view that this system of cropping could rather be regarded to be a process which involves the integrated use of some specific types of chemical agro-inputs along with organic form of inputs such as manures.

As a matter of fact, the basic concept of organic method of farming lies in trat, in order to secure optimum production from an agricultural crop, the requirements that are actually obtained from the soil medium and if necessary, supplementation of inputs from extrinsic source which areorganic in nature are considerad enough and are also justifiable. Hence, necessity of applying inorganic chemicals to serve as inputs is not imperative and thus, could not be regarded to be an additional step.

Objectives

Organic farming could be said to rest on three basic objectives which could be stated as follows.

1. Getting rid of ill-health of the people who consume the crops.

2. Abstinence of deterioration in agricultural potential of the soil.

3. Preserving the ecosystem in the locality.

The advocates of organic farming are of the conviction that on consumption of the crops which have been grown with inorganic forms of chemical inputs, people are afflicted with health hazards. Hence, in order to produce food-stuffs that would not bring about noxious effect on health on their consumption, organic farming is bold step.

Application of fertilizers or any other chemical inputs adversely affects physico-chemical condition of the soil and destructs soil flora and faunna. As a result, productive capacity of the soil greatly diminishes in the long run and adversity is greater if chemical inputs are applied regularly and in high doses.

The exponents of organic farming pay great emphasis on restoring the ecosystem in a locality. This refers to all the organisms that inhabit in an area and the physical environment. The biological components of an ecosystem comprise producers and they may also be consumers, comprising heterophytes, i.e., herbivores, carnivores or omnivores, or decomposers that comprise saprophytes, detritivores, scavengers etc. The regular application of fertilizers or other inorganic chemicals is said to act adversely of ecosystem to a considerable extent.