Relevance: GS-3: Agriculture, Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation.

Key phrases: Sustainable farming, environmental health, economic profitability, social and economic equity.

Why in News?

• A sustainable natural farming system adopted in southern Rajasthan’s Banswara district, which has created new livelihood sources and brought food security to indigenous tribal communities, has impressed the Chief Minister’s Economic Transformation Advisory Council.

What is Sustainable farming?

• Sustainable farming is farming in sustainable ways meeting society's present food needs, without compromising the ability for current or future generations to meet their needs.
• The basic goals of sustainable agriculture are environmental health, economic profitability, and social and economic equity.
• Sustainable agriculture allows us to produce and enjoy healthy foods without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same. The key to sustainable agriculture is finding the right balance between the need for food production and the preservation of environmental ecosystems.

Benefits of Sustainable Farming:

• Contributes to Environmental Conservation: Sustainable agriculture helps to replenish the land as well as other natural resources such as water and air. By adopting sustainable practices, farmers will reduce their reliance on non-renewable energy, reduce chemical use and save scarce resources. This replenishment ensures that these natural resources will be able to sustain life for future generations considering the rising population and demand for food.
• Public Health Safety: Sustainable agriculture avoids hazardous pesticides and fertilizers. As a result, farmers are able to produce fruits, vegetables and other crops that are safer for consumers, workers, and surrounding communities. Through careful and proper management of livestock waste, sustainable farmers can protect humans from exposure to pathogens, toxins, and other hazardous pollutants.
• Prevents Pollution: Sustainable agriculture means that any waste a farm produces remains inside the farm’s ecosystem. In this way, the waste cannot cause pollution.
• Prevents Soil Erosion: Our continued ability to produce adequate food has been a serious threat to soil erosion. Therefore, numerous practices have been developed to keep soil in place, which includes reducing or eliminating tillage, managing irrigation to reduce runoff, and keeping the soil covered with plants or mulch.
• Reduction in Cost: Sustainable agriculture lessens the overall costs involved in farming. Smarter farming and moving food from farm-to-fork in a more efficient manner have helped everyone involved with the agriculture industry.
• Biodiversity: Sustainable farms produce a wide variety of plants and animals, resulting in biodiversity. During crop rotation, plants are seasonally rotated, and this results in soil enrichment, prevention of diseases, and pest outbreaks.

Sustainable Farming Methods or Practices:

Let us see various methods or practices of Sustainable Farming in detail:

• Make use of Renewable Energy Sources: The use of solar, hydro-power or wind-farms is ecology friendly. Farmers can use solar panels to store solar energy and use it for electrical fencing and running of pumps and heaters.
• Integrated pest management: Integrated pest management is a combination of pest control techniques for identifying and observing pests in the initial stages. One also needs to realize that not all pests are harmful, and therefore it makes more sense to let them co-exist with the crop than spend money eliminating them.
• Hydroponics and Aquaponics: In these innovative farming techniques, plants grow without soil and get nourished through specialized nutrients that are added to water. In hydroponic systems, crops are grown with the roots directly in a mineral solution or with the roots in an inert medium like gravel or perlite. Aquaponics combines the raising of aquatic animals (such as fish) with the growing of hydroponic crops.
• Crop Rotation: Crop rotation is a tried and tested method used since ancient farming practices proven to keep the soil healthy and nutritious. Crop rotation has a logical explanation to it – the crops are picked in a pattern so that the crops planted this season replenish the nutrients and salts from the soil that were absorbed by the previous crop cycle. For example, row crops are planted after grains to balance the used nutrients.
• Polyculture Farming: It involves growing multiple crop species in one area. These species often complement each other, and greater diversity of products can be produced at one plot while fully utilizing available resources. High biodiversity makes the system more resilient to weather fluctuations, promotes a balanced diet and applies natural mechanisms for preservation of soil fertility.
• Permaculture: Permaculture is a food production system with intention, design, and smart farming to reduce waste of resources and create increased production efficiency. The focus is on the use of perennial crops such as fruit trees, nut trees, and shrubs that all function together in a designed system that mimics how plants in a natural ecosystem would function.
• Avoid Soil Erosion: Healthy soil is key to a good crop. Age-old techniques like tilling the land, plowing etc. still work wonders. Manure, fertilizers, cover crops etc. also help improve soil quality. Crop rotations prevent the occurrence of diseases in crops, as per studies conducted.
• Agroforestry: Agroforestry has become one of the powerful tools of farmers in dry regions with soils susceptible to desertification. It involves the growth of trees and shrubs amongst crops or grazing land, combining both agriculture and forestry practices for long-lasting, productive, and diverse land use when approached sustainably.
• Natural Pest Eliminators: Bats, birds, insects etc. work as natural pest eliminators. Farmers build a shelter to keep these eliminators close. Ladybugs, beetles, green lacewing larvae, and fly parasites all feed on pests, including aphids, mites and pest flies.

Challenges to sustainable farming in India:

• Feeding a growing population: India is still struggling with food security. According to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization, more than 190 million of the Indian population remains hungry on a daily basis.
• Providing a livelihood for farmers: Policies to increase the environmental sustainability of agriculture could impose increased costs on farmers and lead to higher prices for consumers.
• Affordability: In India maximum farmer are poor or marginal with a landholding less than 1 hectare. So they are unable to afford technology in agriculture like drip irrigation.
• Other challenges are rural transport system, need for awareness regarding crop treatment, dependence on irregular monsoons, and the receding agricultural land giving way to urbanization.
• The Indian farmer’s access to modern farming technology is also limited.

Way forward:

• In agriculture, sustainable farming is becoming the need of the hour the world over. Efforts for sustainable farming are on the right track in India, but at a slower pace. So there is a need of policy intervention to give boost to sustainable farming practices.

Source: The Hindu 

Mains Question:

Q. A sustainable natural farming system adopted in southern Rajasthan’s Banswara district, which has created new livelihood sources and brought food security to indigenous tribal communities, In light of the statement explain sustainable natural farming? How can sustainable agriculture help in combating climate change?