Organic farming in India: Status, opportunities and constraints

Sustainable agriculture is necessary to attain the goal of sustainable development. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), sustainable agriculture "is the successful management of resources for agriculture to satisfy changing human needs while maintaining or enhancing the quality of environment and conserving natural resources". A great challenge facing India in the coming years is to provide safe and adequate food for the population not only for today but also for the future. Organic farming is considered as a holistic approach for health of human beings, live stock and agro ecosystem.

Organic food is one of the ways to produce healthy food for human health but it is not so easy for the performance-oriented farm sector to revive this conventional practice since it has the challenge of producing food for the huge population. Organic farming has its own constraints like lack of agricultural policy, infrastructure, marketing, low yield, availability of organic source of manures and fertilizers and many other social and economical factors. This paper will cover the scope, progress and constraints of organic farming in India.