Prospects of Organic farming in Uttarakhand :

Organic farming is rapidly gaining popularity among the farmers throughout the world. It is especially due to concerns about declining trend of quality of natural resources and presence of pollutants in food chain as a reason of decades long external chemical input based intensive farming. In this state organic farming is often seen as only feasible alternative which is supportive to environment, health and sustainability. Uttarakhand, one of the leading states in Organic farming in India, have a predominance of mostly traditional integrated crop livestock farming closed to organic system along with relatively unpolluted ecosystem. The state also have a vast number of certified organic farmers supported by well developed organizational structure for promoting organic farming as well as marketing of organic crop products.

Agriculture is a minor land use in terms of spatial extent but is the backbone of local livelihoods in the Himalayan state, Uttarakhand. It also has a predominance of mostly traditional integrated crop livestock farming along with small and marginal farmers depending on rainfall. Despite population increase, the area under agricultural land use has not changed much over the past 30-40 years in Uttarakhand as a result of socio-cultural restraints as well as legal ban on conversion of notified forests since 1890s, policies of supplying a quota of food grains at subsidised price and promotion farm economy since 1970s.

Especially hilly regions of the state had a comparative edge over many other areas in producing organic products. A vast number of farmers practising organic farming and the state have a well developed structure for promoting organic farming as well as marketing of organic crop products that ensure premium price received by farmers. But the predominance of small holder farmers is also a source of potential challenge for organic farming especially due to certification difficulties, traceability problem and marketing difficulties. So, given the conceptual pros and cons this study provides an overview of strengths and weaknesses of organic farming as experienced by practising organic farmers, in the hilly region of Uttarakhand, the first and the only state in the country with elaborate organic farming policy framed in the year 2000.

Strengths :

1. Uttarakhand is rich in forest cover (64% of total area), the primary source of traditional farmyard manure (leaf litter and 50-70% of livestock feed available from forests) and water resources (upper catchment of the snow-fed Ganga and >1000 mm annual rainfall), the key inputs for sustaining organic farming. Forest leaf litter is mostly used as bedding material in livestock sheds and courtyards and litter-livestock excreta mixture as farmyard manure .

2. “Community based certification system along with other support services” was second most important factor. The provision of community based certification system as followed by UOCB, the chief organic farming certification agency in the state, is proved to beneficial especially for small and marginal farmers, who have predominance in the state .The next factors based on importance was found to be “the rich indigenous knowledge base of local population” and “self reliant-low costenvironment adaptive crop-livestock integrated farming” system, were food sufficient Chandra et al. and thus provide ideal condition for converting into organic farming without incurring much hidden cost or efforts.

3. “policies to promote preservation of rich mountain biodiversity and discouraging agrochemicals”.The policies in the state, which was announced as organic state at the very year of its formation, actively discouraged modern inputs. It had also escaped shifting cultivation with 3-4 years fallow periods, predominant in other Himalayan states. Thus the state still maintained the natural biodiversity and natural resource purity from synthetic chemicals which provide the state’s farmers an upper hand for achieving the organic label.

Weakness Factors:

1. The most serious factor considered as weakness was “comparatively lower productivity of organic crop” .Converting into organic system always coupled with loss of productivity of crops. It is because of forbiddance of using synthetic chemical inputs along with a numbers of other restrictions in terms of variety, irrigation and other practises. Organic farms yield on an average 10-15% less than conventional farms in its maturity level which may be more in the initial years of conversion

2. Unsatisfactory price premium for organic products and “inadequate supply of organic inputs and skilled labour” was found to be next two important weakness factors. Given the predominance of subsistence farmers in the hills which often seemed very difficult to sustain for farmers till the achieve level of profitable production.

3. Also the market base for organic products still at developing stage at domestic market. The international trade in organic products is often considered risky businesses due to existence of diseases, traceability problems as also self-sufficiency in importing countries. Only about 8% of the total organic produce is consumed by the domestic market .

4. The restriction applied on import of agricultural products from developing countries often due to political reasons is an important limiting factor given the limited demand and less price premium in domestic market .

5. Apart from this due to not widespread adoption and often difficult geographical condition of the state the critical input supply suffered thus in the process often compelled the farmers to pay comparatively higher price for inputs, to be collected from distant market.

6. 95% organic farmers faced the problem of lack of marketing intelligence, lack of right marketing network, lack of regular supply, lack of availability of organic inputs like bio-fertilisers and biopesticides.

7. Rigorous certification process and complex practices was found to be important weakness factor for Uttarakhand organic farmers. Organic certification as perceived by the farmers in the study area was quite complex, especially for small farmers. Certification primarily based on documentation, while most small farmers are illiterate and thus often remained unable to follow all the quality parameter involved.

Opportunity factors:

1. Significant promotion effort by govt and non govt agencies was perceived as the most important opportunity factor  followed by willingness to pay for safe organic food in nearby cities.

2. Uttarakhand has a well developed organic farming policy from the very time of creation of the state which ultimately help not only to established a well developed government mechanism to promote organic farming spearheaded by UOCB (Uttarakhand Organic Commodity Board) but also in turns attracted a number of NGO and private companies to get involved in the overall network of organic farming. It is proved to be increasingly beneficial for not only present organic farmers but for future farmer who will converted into organic farming with lesser difficulty.

3. Besides the environmental and economic concerns, growing market especially in cities is another important stimulant for organic. Cities of Uttarakhand itself and neighbouring Delhi and Uttar Pradesh and Punjab also displayed similar trend presently.

4. The next important opportunity factors were traditional crop livestock based production system,“abundance of abandoned cattle in Uttarakhand” and “scope for agricultural tourism in state”. The majority of farmers in Uttarakhand operate mixed crop– livestock farming systems under different types of agroecosystems .This integration of various forms of crops and animals ensure input availability for both crop and dairy enterprise along with efficient recycling of byproducts. It also offers synergistic interactions with a greater total contribution than the sum of their individual effects

5. Lastly Uttarakhand as a famous tourist destination has an inherent potential to further promote agriculture tourism in form of holiday farm stay etc. which is increasingly used by some organic farmers to boost up their income at least at the primary stages of conversion their organic farming which also increased their product visibility to the tourist from various state.

                        Organic farming has a strong potential not only in Uttarakhand but also in various regions of India especially those which are relatively less intervened by high external input dependent intensive in-organic farming. With rich indigenous knowledge, rich biodiversity, lower cost of production of organic farming and with still unexplored vast domestic market conversion to organic production looks like a lucrative option for not only certified organic and other traditional farmers of Uttarakhand but also farmers throughout India. But given its stringent standard requirement as well as lack of infrastructural and financial support it’s hard to be adopted on a mass scale in short time. If supported by successive capacity and knowledge building and promotion of organic products to increase consumers’ awareness of organic products, along with strong policy measures for promotion and certification by government by shedding the past dilemma, Uttarakhand in particular and India in general will be able to take a lead in the world of organic movement.