Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (Deemed University), Pune-411 004, Maharashtra.
Organic farm production and trade has emerged as an important sector in India as in other parts of the developing world. The global market is growing steadily and is expected to reach US $ 102 billion by 2010. More than 120 countries produce organic products and Australia is the lead country having about 12 million hectares area under organic management in 2007. However in India, the development has been rather slow due to several reasons; the major being higher emphasis to food security than food safety. Lack of a central agency to collect data on area under organic agriculture, different agencies have estimated area differently. As per SOEL-FiBL survey 2007, about 150790 hectare area is under organic agriculture, which accounts for 0.1 per cent of the total agriculture area; which is very low as compared to other countries. According to government statistics, the country produced only 14,000 tonnes of organic food products in 2002. India is exporting tea, cotton, cotton yarn and spices to Europe, US and Japan and export-volumes are looking up. India has enormous potential for organic farming using traditional wisdoms prevailing in the villages of India. The agro-climatic conditions and agricultural biodiversity are conductive to organic agriculture. The development of organic farming in India suffers from the problems of supply and demand uncertainties, appropriate processing technology, high cost of certification and inspection, and market development. Therefore, encouraging organic agriculture would require appropriate government policies to address some of these problems, especially during the initial stages. The opportunity in export of organic agricultural produce has to be tapped with adequate safeguard so that interests of small and marginal farmers are not jeopardized.
