THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 16 September 2019 (Let the farmer choose (Indian Express))

Let the farmer choose (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Economy
Prelims level: ZBNF
Mains level: ZBNF analysis

Context

• Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) has received an endorsement from the NITI Aayog, FM and the PM.

Challenges with ZBNF

• India’s premier academy of agricultural scientists came out against this “unproven technology”.
• They say that it brings no incremental gain to either farmers or consumers.
• Since the mid-1960s, India’s annual foodgrain output has risen from 80-85 million tonnes (mt) to 280 mt-plus. It has risen from 20 mt to 176 mt for milk and by similar magnitudes in vegetables, fruits, poultry meat, eggs, sugarcane, and cotton.
• A significant part of these increases have come from crossbreeding or improved varieties/hybrids responsive to chemical fertiliser application, and crop protection chemicals to ensure that the resultant genetic yield gains aren’t eaten away by insects, fungi or weeds.
• Without IR-8 rice, urea, chlorpyrifos or artificial insemination, the nation would simply not have been able to feed itself.
• The basic idea of “zero budget” itself rests on very shaky scientific foundations. Agriculture can never be zero budget.
• Its propounder claims that nitrogen, the most important nutrient for plant growth, is available “free” from the air. But being in a non-reactive diatomic (N2) state, it has to be first “fixed” into a plant-usable form — which is what ammonia or urea is.
• Even maintaining indigenous cows and collecting their dung and urine in microbial, seed treatment and insect pest management solutions — entails labor cost.
• Crop yields cannot go up beyond a point with just cow dung that has only around 3% nitrogen (as against 46%t in urea), 2% phosphorous (46% in di-ammonium phosphate) and 1% potassium (60% in muriate of potash).

Way ahead

• Promoting techniques such as conservation tillage, trash mulching, green manuring and vermicomposting
• Reducing the use of chemical fertilisers and insecticides through integrated nutrient and pest management.
• Eliminating fertiliser subsidies to encourage their judicious use.
• Give farmers a fixed sum of money per acre, which they can use to buy chemical-based inputs or to engage the extra labour necessary for organic agricultural practices.

Conclusion

• Let the farmer choose between non-organic, organic or even ZBNF.

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Prelims Questions:

Q.1) With reference to zonal councils consider the following statements:
1. Zonal councils have been established by the Parliament to promote interstate cooperation and coordination.
2. They are statutory bodies established under the States Reorganisation Act 1956.
3. The Union Home Minister is the Chairman of all the Councils.

Which of the above statements are correct?
(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 1 and 3 only
(c) 2 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3

Answer: D
Mains Questions:
Q.1) To what extent state may provide the cultivator with funds, but not incentivise untested technologies like zero budget natural farming. Comment.