ORGANIC FARMING-INDIAN TRADITIONAL FARMING

Bikash Choudhury

  

                                                  

Statistics has never been a perfect science; not because of its central tendency, but, the method, scope and scale of primary data collection brings a lot of social and cultural bias which eventually influence the result of the study. However, I am no Statistics basher. In 1700 A.D Indian share in the Global income was 22.6 %( India-Pakistan-Bangladesh) which was just 0.7% lower than the share of Income of entire Europe that stood at 23.3%, then; the paradox lies in the free fall of Indian income share to 4.6% in 1995, in about 300 yrs. India was a rich Agricultural country in History through its traditional farming technique which remain sustainable century after century in contrast to the so called modern farming which has upped the volume a great deal; while, its value in terms of quality of human consumption and health remains questionable; as the residual chemical content in the food and vegetables remain beyond tolerable limits. That is putting the standard of general health in the country in the harms way and therefore, need to be revisited. And, perhaps therefore the demand for Organic food is growing in all across the World and projected to be worth $104 billion by 2015. History could actually repeat it self and India’s share in Global Income could return to the level of 20% in 1700 A.D by completely returning our Agriculture to Organic; while, adopting those modern techniques of Agri Science & Bio-technology. First of all, our Big Modern Retail chains like Big Bazaar, Reliance Fresh and others should immediately open a separate Organic Food Counter or a Store if it were financially viable at the outset to give the Organic farming movement a leg up which would probably double the area under certified organic farming in just 3 yrs and therefore enhance our value based Agriculture export to potential western countries and capturing the minds and markets in a very short period of time. If they can sell Technology at premium all these years; can’t we sale healthy food at a super premium? After all human being would consume food personally and not the technology.