Interventions that make agriculture sustainably high-yielding, eco-friendly and empower small-holder farmers - A research paper (2009)

 Stating that modern agriculture increases production cost, the author observes that productivity of the same crop was higher in pre-British times than what it is now with modern agriculture techniques.

As these old agricultural techniques have not been scientifically researched there is a lot of scepticism which also results in them not being promoted. The paper lists out agricultural techniques, which result in sustainable high yields and are accepted by the scientific community.

The author states that the many techniques listed out in the paper have been part of agricultural experiments at International Crop Research Institute for Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). Crop yields from these techniques were as good if not better than yields from conventional agriculture in 6 out of the 8 years.

The author lists out techniques like bunding and trenching, rainwater harvesting, planting trees on-farm, polycropping, surface mulch, recycling of degradable farm material etc. Short write ups on each of these techniques, as well as internet links to other documents on these techniques are provided.

Real life examples of people using such techniques include Darshan Singh Tabiba in Punjab who uses waste from sugar factories as cattle feed, vegetable waste for feeding pigs and cattle waste for compost, besides other things from the farm that can be recycled.

The annexures provide more detail of the techniques mentioned, as well as 'recipes', to prepare different types of organic inputs that can improve crop yields.

Download the paper here: