Organic Farming for Sustainable Agriculture

Organic farming promotes the use of crop rotations and cover crops, and encourages balanced host/predator relationships. Organic residues and nutrients produced on the farm are recycled back to the soil. Cover crops and composted manure are used to maintain soil organic matter and fertility. Preventative insect and disease control methods are practiced, including crop rotation, improved genetics and resistant varieties. Integrated pest and weed management, and soil conservation systems are valuable tools on an organic farm. Conventional agriculture is environmentally unsustainable. And, it is a misnomer that organic farming is economically unviable. High demand and low supply has further created an inflationary pressure on organic food products. This supply-demand mismatch can be eased fundamentally by making organic production mainstream with location-specific hybrid production strategies. Specialised farmer training costs, higher processing and inventory holding costs, and increased packaging, logistics and distribution costs add to the price of end products. Nevertheless, investments in achieving operations excellence by companies will facilitate lowering the cost of organic food products. The absence of organic food products across all segments in the market is a concern. Consumers find little value buying limited organic products at a premium when rest of the foodstuff they consume is non-organic. Prospects are immense on the supply side as currently organically cultivated crop areas represent only a small fraction of the total acreage of these crops. The good news is that the number of organic food categories has grown to more than 200, including tea, spices, flour, cereals, fruits, vegetables, milk, and honey. In order to sustain consumer trust, maintaining an accurate audit stream, and preventing cross-contamination with conventional goods would be crucial. Agriculture is now becoming transformed into dynamic productive and profitable sector because of ever-increasing demand for food and food products. In order to cope up with the food production target, more emphasis is likely to be given to agricultural inputs. The use of chemicals as plant protection practices acts as an insurance against the risk of loosing not only the crop but also the money spent on advanced technology used as inputs in attaining higher production. Breakthrough in the development of different agrochemicals and their widespread use at the farm level indeed has helped to boost the agricultural production in all countries.