Effects of green revolution: and recent development of organic farming with special reference to Indian Punjab

The high nutritional requirements of paddy and wheat, the major crop rotation in the state has exhausted the soil of nutrients. Resultantly, Punjab state which has just around 3 percent of cultivated area accounts for about 10 percent of total chemical fertilizer consumption in the country. The state is adding 1332 thousand tonnes of nitrogen, 379 thousand tonnes of phosphorus and 57 thousand tonnes of potassic fertilizers to the soil annually. The use of chemical fertilizers in the state has gone up many times from 213 thousand tonnes in 1970–71 to 1768 thousand tonnes in 2008–09. The fertility of Punjab soils has diminished over the years with deficiency in nitrogen and phosphorus. Thus, it is clear that the present farming system is not sustainable as the soil is deficient of all the micro and macronutrients. Now, the area under organic farming in India too has increased from 37000 ha to 103, 000 ha during 2002–03 to 2007–08. Similarly, organic farming has been introduced in the state of Punjab recently and gaining wide popularity. The study concluded that only 67 ha (0.016 percent of the total certified area in India) area was certified and about 3253 ha (0.70 percent of the total in conversion area in India) area is under conversion for organic farming during 2008 in Punjab. The total area under organic farming (certified +in-conversion) was about 3320 ha (0.38 percent of the total area under organic farming in India) during 2008 in Punjab. The present paper highlighted the effect of green revolution over the years in respect to chemical fertilizer and pesticide consumption, contamination of food, deterioration of soil fertility and also highlighted the recent developments of organic farming in respect to area, export, infrastructure set up etc in the world as well as India with special reference to Indian Punjab by taking secondary information from different sources as well as primary information from the farmers.