India's food security at risk: How science-backed regenerative farming can rewrite the script for sustainable agriculture

Proponents of intensive agriculture argue that the current agricultural system in India will continue to support food security by increasing production over time. However, scientific data on several critical determinants of agricultural performance do not support this optimism.

There is mounting evidence of declining soil health and groundwater resources, as well as a reduction in fertiliser efficacy. These deteriorating trends—exacerbated by climate change—clearly indicate that grain production of staples (rice and wheat, for example) may decline drastically in the next decade, while food demand grows at a rate of 2-3 per cent every year.

There is no credible scientific evidence that current business-as-usual intensive agriculture can ensure India's food security. This jeopardises not only the income and livelihood of millions of farmers, but could also impair food security in the future. 

There is, therefore, an urgent need to identify, evaluate and highlight sustainable and responsible agricultural systems, which are often shrouded by the dominant intensive agricultural system.

Farmer-led initiatives supported by modern agro-ecological principles and techniques have demonstrated how such alternative systems can double farmers' productivity and incomes, while judiciously utilising natural resources. Such sustainable agricultural systems are often referred to as natural or regenerative farming.

Approximately 2-3 million farmers in India practise such agricultural systems, but they comprise less than 5 per cent of the total number of farmers in India.

While these farmers are practising sustainable farming systems, such as avoiding agrochemicals, most are small and marginal farmers who primarily produce for subsistence, rather than market surplus. To attract the larger surplus-producing farmers and corporates, we need country-wide rigorous and scientific evidence, without which scaling up sustainable farming systems to the national level and mainstreaming it may not be possible.

The discussion based on such scientific evidence should not be restricted to farmland alone. We need to develop a public narrative on the viability and superior characteristics of regenerative agriculture by broadening the discussion among citizens to raise awareness at both the local and national levels about the benefits of regenerative agriculture.

These benefits include climate resilience, improved health of both farmers and consumers, environmental sustainability, and social inclusivity. Such a public narrative, based on rigorous scientific evidence, will also help generate a consensus among producers, consumers, and the broader society for a paradigm shift in Indian agriculture. 

A pan-India study is required to critically and comprehensively examine both intensive and natural or regenerative farming, and to build credible scientific evidence on productivity, farm incomes, soil health, biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, energy, nutritional aspects, and various social and health-related indicators.

Such scientific evidence can help guide policy in the right direction to improve areas where intensive agriculture can be enhanced, and also expand and support natural or regenerative farming practices where they show promising results. Farmers need to be included in designing such studies that can provide transparent evidence for making informed choices about the practices they can implement on their farms. 

This will also help reduce the unnecessary burden on subsidies for fertilisers and other agricultural inputs, including electricity and water. Knowledge-intensive agroecology-based agriculture is required to redesign agriculture in India.

The savings from reduced subsidies for chemical fertilisers as a result of switching to regenerative practices can provide sufficient resources to support this shift from subsidy-based, intensive agriculture to agriculture that follows all the tenets of regenerative farming.  

Productivity is the most critical indicator in India's prevalent intensive agriculture systems and worldwide. Any farming system that can work well for farmers must be comparable in terms of productivity, income, and nutritional density and diversity.

Such systems are being evaluated in some parts of India, such as the community-managed natural farming (CNF) system in Andhra Pradesh. A recent report indicates that under this system, the average yield increase ranges from 7.8 per cent to 25.9 per cent for prime crops, including paddy, maize, groundnut, finger millet, and chilli.

While yields improved, their input costs fell significantly. These two key parameters resulted in a significant improvement in the gross income by 28.3 per cent. In addition, farmers working on nearby industrial farms had a loss (on average) of 189 working days as compared to 121 working days by CNF farmers, due to various illnesses. 

While such evidence is promising, it is geographically limited. It is noteworthy that the intensive agricultural systems are not typically evaluated based on their nutritional, environmental, biodiversity, or health impacts. Therefore, they often escape the scrutiny that they warrant.  

In addition to these positive social, economic, and health impacts, natural or regenerative farming has the potential to sequester carbon and avoid greenhouse gas emissions far higher than those of industrial agricultural systems.

Agriculture accounts for about 16 per cent of India's total greenhouse gas emissions—at approximately 421 million tonnes annually. Out of a total of 178 million hectares of agricultural land, at a modest rate of 2.5 tonnes per hectare of carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions avoidance, Indian agriculture can offset its entire emissions. This can be a win-win situation for farmers, consumers and all stakeholders. A clear pathway to ‘net-zero agriculture’ in India can be established by adopting regenerative farming on a large scale.   

India has 15 agroclimatic zones that vary in soil types, climate, practices, and cultures. Thus, a comprehensive scientific study is needed to test such sustainable agricultural systems and compare them with intensive agricultural systems throughout India, generating credible and extensive scientific evidence.

Large-scale evidence will help address the concerns of policymakers and farmers, and provide transparent information to consumers about the nutritional and environmental benefits of sustainable, regenerative farming practices. 

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the apex body for coordinating agricultural education and research in India, should also play a leading role in improving the education and research required to develop new agroecological knowledge-based agricultural systems. Similarly, there is a need to increase investment in the sustainable agriculture programme, including net-zero agriculture initiatives. 

Such investments, accompanied by a comprehensive research programme and a state-of-the-art nationwide evaluation, will help identify and adopt regenerative farming practices.

This can help find a viable alternative to the currently dominant and unsustainable industrial farming systems.

Scaling up natural and regenerative farming across India will ensure its food, nutritional, and ecological security. It will also significantly contribute to our national commitment to attaining ‘net-zero’ status by 2070.

Dr Harpinder Sandhu is a transdisciplinary researcher and ecological economist at Federation University Australia; Dr Rajiv Kumar is Chair of the Pahle India Foundation and former Vice Chairman of Niti Aayog.

India