Regenerative Agriculture, A solution for soil degradation (GS Paper 3, Environment)
Context:
- Indian agricultural farms are increasingly staring at a crisis, with over 29 percent (96.4 million hectares) of India’s total geographical area (328.7 million hectares) being degraded, roughly 2.5 times the size of India’s largest state, Rajasthan.
- The numbers highlight the stiff challenge India must face to achieve its target of becoming land-degradation-neutral by 2030, as announced by the Prime Minister in September 2019 at the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.
- Soil erosion has always occurred naturally, but today, topsoil loss from erosion due to agriculture surpasses the rate of soil formation
Water scarcity:
- To make matters worse, India faces a severe water crisis. Almost 17 states/Union Territories have been categorised as ‘over-exploited’, where the annual ground water extraction is more than the annual extractable ground water resource.
- According to Falkenmark’s Water Stress Index, about 76 percent of Indians face water scarcity. Agriculture is the most dominant contributor to water stress, and as much as 91 percent of our freshwater is now used in the agriculture sector.
Ecological poverty:
- So far, all the wins for reducing income poverty could be undone by growing ecological poverty which is the “lack of an ecologically healthy natural resource base that is needed for a human society’s survival and development”.
- The Indian smallholder farmers constitute 86 percent of the farmers in the country, with an average land holding of 1.08 hectares. They are most vulnerable to ecological poverty. In the last two decades, India’s agricultural sector has suffered negative total revenues.
- The small size and low profitability do not allow smallholder farmers to deploy relevant technologies to fight climate change, instead, they are forced to increase yields through unsustainable practices like deforestation, overgrazing, intensive soil tillage, monoculture cropping, bare fallowing, and heavy reliance on the use of chemical fertilisers and biocides.
- These practices damage the microorganisms which makes the soil fertile, carbon-rich.
- Scientific organisations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are concerned about such practices because they increase the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). Agriculture already contributes 25-30 percent of the total GHG emissions, globally.
A potential solution:
- A consensus is emerging among soil scientists that regenerative agriculture holds enormous potential to restore soil health and productivity in degraded landscapes while delivering financial benefits to smallholder farmers.
- It also improves water use and efficiency by enhancing the health and nutrient-holding capacity of the soil. Studies have established that a 1-percent increase in soil organic matter per 0.4 hectare (ha) increases water storage potential by more than 75,000 litres.
- The Government of India, as part of its climate commitment, has begun promoting several regenerative agriculture principles through National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture.
Defining regenerative agriculture:
- Regenerative agriculture is commonly defined as a “way of farming to build and improve soil fertility, whilst sequestering and storing atmospheric CO2, increasing on-farm diversity and improving water and energy management”.
- It is increasingly getting standardised with different voluntary schemes offering third-party certifications from audit agencies.
- The main standards operational in India are regenagri and Regenerative Organic Certified®.
- Regenagri is developed jointly by the world’s oldest sustainability organisation Solidaridad, and global certification organisation; Control Union, and has so far brought 1.25 million acres of land under regenerative practices.
- Several food businesses like Unilever, Nestle, etc. are also developing business-specific regenerative agriculture standards.
How do small Indian farmers benefit from regenerative agriculture?
- There are four fundamental benefits for Indian small farmers opting for carbon sequestration using regenerative agricultural practices.
- Firstly, Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) helps restore degraded soils using less water, improving farmers’ agricultural productivity while reducing costs due to reduced use of fertilisers and chemicals.
- Secondly, healthier soils make farms more resilient against droughts and heavy rainfall.
- Thirdly, the process can generate additional income from the rapidly expanding voluntary carbon credit markets. A carbon credit is a certificate equivalent to 1 ton of carbon that permits the emission of one ton of greenhouse gases per certificate.
- Fourthly, many FMCG companies are asking farmer suppliers to adopt targets to cut emissions using regenerative agriculture and prioritising partnerships with new suppliers who already have regenerative practices in place.
- Smallholders who are traditionally excluded from high-value supply chains would be able to grow inclusively by becoming regenerative farmers.
Challenges:
- It is necessary to recognise that farmers are the producers and owners of carbon. There should be mechanisms for trading in SOC using the principles of Fair Trade that calculate a minimum price that ensures the average costs of the projects will be covered, plus an additional “Fairtrade Premium” goes directly to the local community to fund activities that help them become more resilient through regenerative agriculture.
- Second, in August 2022, India revised its carbon credit policies to ban the export of carbon credits. As per the new policy, “carbon credits are not going to be exported. These credits will have to be generated by domestic companies, bought by domestic companies.”
- Such a policy would limit the options for smallholder farmers. These farmers took lower prices for decades to keep the consumer prices stable and were not allowed to export food at higher prices.
- The Government may consider schemes like Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana to be extended to regenerative agriculture farmers. The certification costs for regenerative agriculture and carbon verification are steep.
- The mushrooming of different regenerative standards can derail the credibility of the regenerative agriculture movement and affect smallholder farmers. There is a necessity for urgently developing a set of common values for regenerative agriculture standards, their certification protocols, systems and tools with a focus on the positive impact on farmers as well as climate.
Conclusion:
- Climate change mitigation, food security, climate resilience, biodiversity, and soil health are all interrelated and these could be collectively achieved through regenerative agriculture.
- In this COVID-affected decade, Indian agriculture stakeholders must redesign agriculture the way it was done in the 1960s, which ushered in the Green Revolution. On the other hand, regenerative agriculture is good for the people, the planet, and profit.
