Govt assistance to ‘natural farming’ may see substantial jump in scaled-up mission plan

The Centre is planning to enhance the subsidy on “natural farming” by 50 per cent by re-launching the scheme on a mission mode in select blocks without hampering the food security, a concern many experts have expressed amid its failure in Sri Lanka. Under the plan, now under consideration, one cluster (of 500 hectares), each in 1-2 blocks will be taken up to motivate farmers.

Bhartiya Prakritik Krishi Padhati (BPKP) was introduced as a sub-scheme of Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) in 2020-21 under which the Centre releases about ₹12,200/hectare for a period of three years for cluster formation, capacity building and continuous handholding. In the 2022-23 Budget both the BPKP and PKVY have been subsumed under Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY).

“The current assistance is too low to motivate farmers and Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar has agreed for enhancing it. It could be around ₹18,000 per hectare under the revamped plan depending on the scale of the roll-out,” a source said. Though the plan is to cover 6,672 blocks in the country in phases over a period of time with at least one cluster each, initially the focus will be on those areas which have been practising natural farming and there is potential to achieve the target at the earliest, sources said.

Natural and organic

However, some experts have said that the assistance under natural farming should be at par with organic farming where farmers currently receive ₹31,000-32,500 per hectare for three years.

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“India has the first mover advantage in the label of ‘Natural’ in the global agricultural export market. This creates greater opportunities for us. The label of Natural in agriculture is larger and deeper than ‘Organic’ in view of social and economic benefits in addition to the Bharatiya concept,” said S Chandrasekaran, a foreign trade policy expert. The label of organic is matured and therefore, the financial assistance on natural farming should be equal to organic agriculture, he added.

“The financial assistance scheme of organic agriculture could be linked with Tracenet Certification Software of APEDA, as it contains comprehensive and practising farmers, in order to create efficient utilisation,” Chandrasekaran added.

Simultaneously, standards will be developed for crops produced through natural farming and promotion will be initiated with separate export-oriented branding different from organic products, the source said. Positioning is very important to get premium for produce of natural farming that will be one of the key motivators for the farmers, the source said.

Food security

On food security issue, the government officials said that there is no such threat as production will not drop in natural farming and the selection of crops like oilseeds and pulses will be rather beneficial for the country.

The current BPKP scheme emphasises on exclusion of all synthetic chemical inputs and promotes on-farm biomass recycling with major stress on biomass mulching, use of cow dung-urine formulations and plant based preparations, Tomar had said in a written reply in Lok Sabha last month.

Until now, government-assisted natural farming area has reached 4.09 lakh hectares for which ₹49.81 crore has been disbursed in eight States including Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Kerala.

Allocation under RKVY started during the UPA government, has been increased nearly three-fold to ₹10,433 crore for 2022-23 from ₹3,712.44 crore (BE) in current fiscal and the hike is over five-times from the revised estimate. The scheme allows flexibility to States to develop and implement their own plans and draw the Central funds. The revamped plan on natural farming may also allow States to disburse additional funds above the Central assistance from the RKVY budget, the source said.

According to a parliamentary standing committee report, about 290 districts account for consumption of 85 per cent of fertilisers used in the farm sector. While promoting organic and natural farming, the government may not touch these districts initially as they also contribute in the overall food production.

In January, the Sri Lankan government announced a compensation package of $200 million to rice farmers whose crops were affected by the ban on chemical fertilisers and the country had to shelve its plan to become the world’s first country to become 100-per cent organic after a food crisis.

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