Greenpeace India on Thursday challenged union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar to come up with details of programmes implemented by the ministry of agriculture to arrest the soil degradation crisis created by chemical fertilizers and declining organic matter content.  Greenpeace’s response comes in the backdrop of an answer Pawar gave in Parliament on Tuesday to question number 93 raised by Tufani Saroj and  M.K. Raghavan . The minister claimed that most of the recommendations from Greenpeace India’s Living Soils campaign are already part of the schemes and programmes implemented by the government.

The agriculture minister was misguiding Parliament while making the statement. We have recommended a mission to support ecological fertilisation considering the poor health of soils in the country. A mission mode approach is essential as we have found that the support for the same is miniscule and scattered, therefore, warranting the need for mainstream policy to promote generation and application of organic matter in the soil. We have also recommended an “eco bonus” for farmers adopting eco-friendly practices to maintain soil health. These recommendations which captured the aspirations of farmers who are keen on soil, was ignored by the government.

An analysis of the major policies and schemes reveal that there is hardly any support for ecological/ organic fertilisation. The major schemes on soil health management and organic farming promotion are National Project on Management of Soil Health and Fertility (NPMSF) and National Project on Organic Farming (NPOF) respectively. The total spending for these two programmes taken together as per the revised estimates for 2010-11 is only Rs 35.85 crores (Rs 20.85 crore for NPMSF and  Rs 15 crore for NPOF).

The other schemes which have got components for promotion of ecological fertilization or organic farming include Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yogana (RKVY) and National Horticultural Mission (NHM). The Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) has 17 components and a perusal of the data for 28 states published by the ministry itself reveals that government spent only 2.64% of the total allocation for organic farming/ biofertilizer components during 2009-10. The revised estimate for RKVY for 2010-11 indicates a total expenditure of 6722 crores. A state like Punjab in the Indo gangetic plain which is suffering from degradation (as the agriculture minister himself mentions in his answer), has spent not even a single rupee on organic farming/biofertilizer component under RKVY during the last three years.  NHM again has several components and organic farming is only one among them. The revised estimates for 2010-11 for NHM is only Rs 986 crores.

On the other hand, the government is promoting chemical fertilizers rather vigorously. The revised estimates for chemical fertilizer subsidy for 2010-11 is Rs 54,976 crores, and experts point out that it may go further up towards the end of the fiscal.

All through our “Living Soils” campaign we have noticed that there is hardly any support for biomass generation and the promotion of ecological fertilization in the country. Only 1% out of the 1,000 farmers we have surveyed in five states has received any kind of support for ecological fertilization.

The only hope we have now is finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s promise to promote organic farming and green manuring under the yet to be launched National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA). We hope that once the NMSA rolls out, it will be rooted in ecological farming principles and will have sufficient allocation to promote all components of ecological fertilization in mainstream agriculture to bring life back in the soils.

(Gopikrishna is campaigner, Sustainable Agriculture for Greenpeace India)