Economic Aspects of Organic Farming

 

Organic farming is the technique to grow crops without the help of chemicals by utilizing resources in a sustainable and eco friendly manner. Today due to increased awareness many people are turning to organic food for a better lifestyle, this has created a snowball effect and now due to the daily increasing demand, farmers have started going organic. From studies conducted all over the world, its observed that, Farmers have shown increased interest in organic farming because of the low cost required to grow and maintain these organic crops. Below is a para from research done on economic aspects of organic farming in America.

“Many farmers are turning to organic or "low input" farming as a strategy for economic survival Several comparisons of actual grain farms in the central and northern states showed that organic farming equals or exceeds conventional farming in economic performance. These findings are supported by studies that used yield data from research plots as inputs to economic models. However, models that relied more heavily on hypothetical data showed an economic disadvantage for organic farming, this may have been a result of the failure of the hypothetical models to incorporate valid assumptions on conservation and efficient utilization of water, nutrients, fuel, labor, and capital Established organic farmers are less vulnerable to natural and economic risks than conventional farmers because their systems are more diversified. They also are less able, however, to take advantage of income tax deductions Future trends in commodity prices, input prices, pollution regulation, and research can be expected to have mixed effects on conventional and organic farmers, but the net impact will probably favor organic farmers. On a macroeconomic (i.e., national) scale, conversion to organic farming would have many benefits. It would reduce federal costs for supporting commodity prices, reduce depletion of fossil fuels, reduce the social costs associated with erosion, improve fish and wildlife habitats, and ensure the productivity of the land for future generations However, widespread conversion to organic farming would have an undesirable impact on the balance of trade. Future research on the economics of organic farming at the farm or micro-economics level should be directed at horticultural crops, southern latitudes, marketing, and the process of conversion from conventional to organic farming Future macroeconomic research should quantify the social benefits described above, enabling decision makers to compare organic farming with other policy options.”

The above para purely discusses the impact of organic farming on farmers and world trade. We can understand that the average farmer would benefit greatly overall not to mention the positive effects on environment. We can see that the low-cost production and better-quality yield on same land is a beautiful aspect to almost all farmers. 

The land cultivated for wheat in Punjab is almost barren, barely surviving with chemicals. During Green revolution they made use of low-cost chemicals with harmful effects to cultivate crops in bulk, leading to decline in vitality of land. In present situation only adopting to organic farming can reverse this situation for better. We can understand that although some fertilizers might be of low-cost, but they are not sustainable in any sense.

Most of the materials needed for fertilizing land in organic farming are made from domestic animals at farm like cow-dung cakes, and to make the soil porous and more fertile earthworms are used. All the materials are either very cheap or easily available at farm. We can conclude that the farmers won’t have to worry about expenses related to crops. Furthermore, due to the growing trends like #GoOrganic the sales would naturally only increase overtime.

By- Anamay Kashiv