Centre's programme to promote organic cultivation to target farm clusters

Big change in earlier programmes to promote organic farming and the new one is its focused approach, says an official

The Centre will subsidise clusters of farmers, instead of individuals, to promote organic farming over larger tracts of land.

“When implemented by individual farmers, the full potential of organic farming can never be realised,” a senior official said. The Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana, announced by the Centre, will run in addition to the existing schemes for promoting organic farming. The objective was to ensure a uniform use of central funds.

The National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture, the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana and the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture are dedicated to providing organic inputs like vermi compost and organic compost to individual farmers.

Certification of organic products, earlier, was also limited to exports and was provided by the department of commerce.

Officials said, the big change in the new programme was its focused approach and its targeting of clusters of farmers.

The new scheme makes the use of neem-coated urea mandatory for 100 per cent of organic produce. Though neem-coated urea was notified as a regular fertiliser in 2010, it was not mandatory and the limit was capped at 35 per cent.

Officials said, the soil health card had also been made a central scheme. Earlier, it was an initiative of the state governments which the Centre supported.

Only 50 million farmers of a total of 130 million have soil health cards, though the programme has been on since the 10th Five Year Plan (2001-02 to 2005-06). Earlier, central programmes assisted state governments with soil testing laboratories. But, the schemes did not help in collection of samples and their analysis.

The new scheme plans to provide all farmers with soil health cards in the next three years which will then be renewed for another three years.

Samples and nutrients for which soil needs to be tested have also been standardised.

The Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchaee Yojana seeks to converge all existing irrigation schemes and adopts a bottoms-up approach. The Cabinet recently allocated Rs 50,000 crore for the scheme to be spent over the next five years.