Budget 2023-24 Expectation: Government must focus on organic, bio-farming as key goals to be accomplished next decade

Globally, soil has become low in organic carbon because of constant tillage for the last 50-60 years. Moreover, there has been a constant increase in mechanisation. This has led to depleted soil layers. We have reduced the farm animal population who earlier were employed to till the soil. With this, the availability of organic manure has also gone down. Loss of active biology in fields impacts production Farmers are not bio-digesting their manure properly which is resulting in poor quality organic manure supporting the soil biology. Complete bio-digestion is essential for producing good-quality manure. Given this scenario, the addition of chemical fertilizers, spraying of toxic crop care chemicals, and non-availability of food has resulted in a substantial loss of active biology in the agricultural fields leading to a loss in productivity. India’s land has a golden opportunity to become organic because it has the most suitable temperature range for biological growth and activity, maximizing the yield potential in organic farming. At the same time, we can also save 30-40 percent of water to recharge our water tables in the coming two decades. Support transition to bio-farming Indian lands are degrading at an accelerated rate due to the excessive use of chemical fertilizers, crop care chemicals, and water. Over the years we too have increased the usage of chemical fertilisers. The Budget must address this issue by supporting the transition of chemical to bio-farming. In India, we have experienced a reduction of chemical fertilizer efficiency by 75 percent in the last 35 years. As a result, our soils have become hard, compact, low in organic carbon, and low in soil biology and our farms are not breathing anymore. If we must address the larger picture, soil health is not just about measuring the nutrients, PH, and electrical conductivity but it is about the biology, its weight, and its activity index which can be measured by CO2 respiration technique. So, one of the focus areas of the new Budget should be on revamping the soil health card methodology. This should include the aspect of biology, physics along with chemistry that the government can pursue. Organic farming benefits Organic and bio-farming is a key goal the budget must lay down to be accomplished in the next 10 years. The government is carrying a burden of almost 1.5 lakh crores on account of 55 crore acre farming including kharif and rabi season combined which means approximately Rs 2,700 per acre, per season. Looking at the organic farming benefits of eliminating toxicity from our food, we should raise this to Rs 4,000 per acre per crop cycle and this is to be given only to farmers who are certified organic. The extra burden of another Rs 75,000 crore when organic India becomes a reality, is a small cost to pay for a healthy India. This would give farmers the ability to source good quality bio manures, bio-fertilizers, and natural and bio-pesticides. Many commercially available bio-solutions providers claim and have demonstrated a profitable transition from chemical to organic farming from the first crop cycle itself. The Budget should create a scheme for promoting such demonstrations on a paid basis on five acres in every village with an underlying guarantee that the protocol should deliver more profits to the farmer compared to his chemical farming plots, side by side. Such a scheme can cost Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 crores annually but can accelerate the education, demonstration, and adoption of organic practices because seeing is believing. Then, only genuine companies will take this offer from the government for a public/private partnership to achieve the dream of ‘Organic India’. The private companies must demonstrate the feasibility of these packages of practices in wheat, rice, soybean, potato, sugarcane, cotton, and banana to cover low and high nutritionally intensive crops. Give sops for mist control technology  To reduce the impact of pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides on the farm worker, it is important for the government to promote and give concessions to mist control technologies for spraying crop care chemicals, either through new-generation polymers and chemicals or through drones. In the next decade, we must start transiting to emphasise nutritional density, the safety of food, shelf life, and quality such as the taste and aroma of the food we produce on our farms. Without this, the farmer’s income will stagnate as the population is stabilizing and will decline in the future. The writer is Chairman and Managing Director, Zydex Group-specialty chemicals player. Twitter @zydexindustries. Views are personal.  Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.