Surinder Sud: The next farm revolution

FARM VIEW

How conservation-agriculture is helping farmers increase yields apart from bringing costs down

Conservation agriculture is the new mantra for sustaining the Green Revolution, especially in the north-western grain bowl where wheat and rice crop yields are tending to stagnate. The concept involves minimum disturbance of soil and perfect land leveling to conserve both soil and water, besides saving labour and fuel. The crop yields rise perceptibly due to enhanced input-use efficiency. The combination of reduced cost and higher production results in better returns to the farmers.

These advantages are driving wheat and rice cultivators in the entire Indo-Gangetic plain in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal to readily adopt this technology. In India, of about 13.5 million hectares under wheat-rice crop rotation in this belt, nearly 2 million hectares are estimated to have already come under conservation agriculture by 2004-05.

Further spread of this technology is expected to be even faster considering that it cuts down land tilling costs by about Rs 2,500 per hectare, reducing fuel consumption by 50 to 60 litres a hectare and curtailing water use by 15 to 20 per cent. In addition, the crop yields have been found to rise by about 2.5 quintals a hectare, on an average.

These estimates are made by the Rice Wheat Consortium (RWC), a body supported jointly by several global and national farm research institutes and managed by the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Research Institute, commonly called CIMMYT (abbreviation of its Mexican name). The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is collaborating with it in a big way in further refining and promoting this technology.

ICAR chief Mangala Rai believes this is another revolution in the offing which would transform Indian agriculture. This would open up new avenues for farm research in areas such as growing paddy with minimum water and developing new plant strains suited specifically for conservation agriculture. India would also host an international congress on conservation agriculture in 2008 where experts from across the globe would discuss various aspects of this technology.

The package of technologies that comprise conservation agriculture include leveling of land with high-tech, laser rays-based leveling machines; growing crops on raised land beds interspersed with furrows to irrigate the plant roots; dispensing with pre-sowing land tilling; and sowing undisturbed fields with specially designed zero-tillage planting equipment (seed-cum-fertiliser drills).

These techniques are supported by measures such as crop residue management and crop diversification to include leguminous crops (which fix atmospheric nitrogen into the soil) in the cropping system and strictly need-based application of fertilisers.

Each component of this technology package offers various advantages, in addition to cost cutting. Laser land leveling, for instance, helps save water and enhances crop yield and input-use efficiency. Zero-tillage cuts down the time consumed in crop planting, enabling timely sowing for better results. The raised bed planting technique reduces the requirement of water as well as costly seeds, besides improving productivity and facilitating crop diversification.

Scientific management of crop residues (stubbles of the previous crop), on the other hand, helps replenish the soil's carbon content and promotes activity of soil micro-organisms, which enhances land fertility and helps save on fertilisers. What is indeed the most significant, it averts the need for burning the residues that causes environmental pollution with consequential human health hazards.

This apart, it has wrecked the myth that the wheat crop needs repeated running of plough and paddy requires puddling (churning) of land in standing water for good yield. In areas having light textured soils and shallow water table, relatively higher paddy yields have been obtained through conservation agriculture involving direct seeding of the crop, doing away with the traditional practice of nursery raising and transplanting of seedling in water-submerged land. Significantly, rice hybrids and the high-value Basmati rice have been observed to respond positively to direct seeding. Since the cost of hybrid rice seed is quite high and the seed has necessarily to be bought afresh every season, the reduced requirement of seed in this method result in savings for farmers.

Raj Gupta of the RWC, who is spearheading the campaign for promotion of conservation agriculture, looks at it as an instrument of poverty alleviation. Unlike the Green Revolution that tended to bypass the resource-starved farmers, the new mode of farming is benefiting all cultivators. Besides, this would, over a period, undo to the damage caused by the earlier Green Revolution to the environment and natural resources such as land and water, he believes.