





































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 5 (1): 31-62 January 2022 

THEMATIC ESSAY 

Dismantling Barriers to Upscaling Agro-ecological 
Farming in India 

Mihir Shah* 

Abstract: With growing recognition of the increasingly destructive impacts of the 
Green Revolution (GR) the world over, heightened further by COVID-19, there is 
an urgent need to scale up alternative approaches embedded within the paradigm of 
agro-ecology. Even so, actual progress on the ground in this direction has been 
extremely slow. I argue that this is because the entire policy framework governing 
agriculture continues to be located within the GR paradigm and acts as a multi-
pronged impediment to upscaling agro-ecological farming. The paper proposes key 
policy reforms that could help dismantle these barriers and facilitate, support, and 
accelerate movement towards agro-ecological farming in India. 

Keywords: Agro-ecological farming; Nature-based solutions; Crop diversification; 
Ecosystem services; Living soils; Wholesome food. 

 

1. CRISIS OF THE GREEN REVOLUTION 

With the wheels coming off the Green Revolution (GR), there is an urgent 
perceived need all over the globe to design alternatives to chemical-
intensive agriculture. The crisis is most powerfully illustrated by the 
example of India, which was the centrepiece of the GR experiment in the 
first place. 

More than 350,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1990, a 
phenomenon completely unprecedented in Indian history. There is growing 
evidence of a steady decline in water tables and water quality. At least 60% 
of India’s districts are either facing the problem of over-exploitation or 
severe contamination of groundwater (Vijayshankar, Kulkarni, and 
Krishnan 2011). There is evidence of fluoride, arsenic, mercury, and even  

 

* Distinguished Professor, Shiv Nadar University. Chaired the Government of India 
Committee to draft the new National Water Policy during 2019-20. mihirbhai25@gmail.com  
Copyright © Shah 2022. Released under Creative Commons Attribution © NonCommercial 
4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of  Economic 

Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581–6152 (print); 2581–6101 (web) 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v5i1.618  

mailto:mihirbhai25@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v5i1.618


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [32] 

 

 

uranium and manganese in groundwater in some areas. The increasing 
levels of nitrates and pesticide pollutants in groundwater have serious health 
implications. The major health issues resulting from the intake of nitrates 
are methemoglobinemia and cancer (WHO 2011). The major health 
hazards of pesticide intake through food and water include cancers, 
tumours, skin diseases, cellular and DNA damage, suppression of the 
immune system, and other intergenerational effects (Margni et al. 2002).1 
Repetto and Baliga (1996) provide experimental and epidemiological 
evidence that many pesticides widely used around the world are immune-
suppressive. Nicolopoulou-Stamati et al. (2016) provide evidence of 
pesticide-induced temporary or permanent alterations in the immune 
system, and Corsini et al. (2008) show how such immune alteration could 
lead to several diseases. Agricultural workers spraying pesticides are a 
particularly vulnerable group, especially in India where they are rarely 
provided protective gear. A study of farmworkers in Punjab found a 
significantly higher frequency of chromosomal aberrations in the peripheral 
blood lymphocytes of workers exposed to pesticides compared to those 
who are not (Ahluwalia and Kaur 2020). A recent study of 659 pesticides 
which examined their acute and chronic risks to human health and the 
environment concludes that 

Evidence demonstrates the negative health and environmental 
effects of pesticides, and there is widespread understanding that 
intensive pesticide application can increase the vulnerability of 
agricultural systems to pest outbreaks and lock in continued 
reliance on their use (Jepson et al. 2020, 2). 

It is also clear that the yield response to the application of increasingly more 
expensive chemical inputs is falling. Indoria et al. (2018) show that the 
average crop response to fertilizer use has fallen from around 25 kg 
grain/kg of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK) fertilizer during 
the 1960s to a mere 6 kg grain/kg NPK by 2010 (Figure 1). This has meant 
higher costs of cultivation without a corresponding rise in output, even as 
this intensified application of inputs compels farmers to draw more and 
more water from below the ground. 

 

 

 
1 Even at low concentrations, pesticides exert several adverse effects that may manifest at 
biochemical, molecular, or behavioural levels. The actual transport, presence, and impact are, 
of course, influenced by drainage, rainfall, microbial activity, soil temperature, treatment 
surface, and application rate, as well as the solubility, mobility, and half-life of individual 
pesticides. 



[33] Mihir Shah 
 

 

Figure 1: Relationship Between Fertilizer Consumption and Crop Productivity 

Source: Indoria et al. (2018, Figure 2) 

After the GR, India has had more and more land under one crop at a time 
and year-on-year production of the same crop on the same land. The 
persistence of monoculture makes India even more vulnerable to 
disruptions from climate change and extreme weather events, for it has by 
now been conclusively established that: 

Crops grown under ‘modern monoculture systems’ are particularly 
vulnerable to climate change as well as biotic stresses, a condition 
that constitutes a major threat to food security . . . what is needed is 
an agro-ecological transformation of monocultures by favoring 
field diversity and landscape heterogeneity, to increase the 
productivity, sustainability, and resilience of agricultural 
production. . .Observations of agricultural performance after 
extreme climatic events in the last two decades have revealed that 
resiliency to climate disasters is closely linked to farms with 
increased levels of biodiversity (Altieri et al. 2015, 3). 

The vast monocultures that dominate 80% of the 1.5 billion 
hectares of arable land are one of the largest causes of global 
environmental changes, leading to soil degradation, deforestation, 
depletion of freshwater resources and chemical contamination 
(Altieri and Nicholls 2020, 2). 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [34] 

 

 

Moreover, despite overflowing granaries, the Global Hunger Index Report 
(2021) ranked India 101 out of 116 countries. FAO et al. (2020) estimate 
that more than 189 million people remained malnourished in India during 
2017–19, which is more than a quarter of the total malnourished people in 
the world. In 2019, India had 28% (40.3 million) of the world’s stunted 
children (low height-for-age) and 43% (20.1 million) of the world’s wasted 
children (low weight-for-height) under five years of age. Paradoxically, at 
the same time, the number of diabetics has increased in every Indian state 
between 1990 and 2016 even among the poor—rising from 26 million in 
1990 to 65 million in 2016. This number is projected to double by 2030 
(Shah 2019). 

 

2. GLOBAL SEARCH FOR ALTERNATIVES 

It has also been shown that plants grown in genetically homogenous 
monocultures lack the necessary ecological defence mechanisms to 
withstand the impact of pest outbreaks. Francis (1986) summarizes the vast 
body of literature documenting lower insect pest incidence and the slowing 
down of the rate of disease development in diverse cropping systems 
compared to the corresponding monocultures. In his classic work on inter-
cropping, Vandermeer (1989) provides multifarious instances of how inter-
cropping enables farmers to minimize risk by raising various crops 
simultaneously. Natarajan and Willey (1996) show how polycultures 
(intercrops of sorghum and peanut, millet and peanut, and sorghum and 
millet) had greater yield stability and showed lower declines in productivity 
during a drought than monocultures. 

Most recently, the largest ever attempt in this direction (Tamburini et al. 
2020) included a review of 98 meta-analyses and a second-order meta-
analysis based on 5,160 original studies comprising 41,946 comparisons 
between diversified and simplified practices. They conclude: 

Enhancing biodiversity in cropping systems is suggested to promote 
ecosystem services, thereby reducing dependency on agronomic inputs 
while maintaining high crop yields. Overall, diversification enhances 
biodiversity, pollination, pest control, nutrient cycling, soil fertility, and 
water regulation without compromising crop yields (Tamburini et al. 2020, 
1). 



[35] Mihir Shah 
 

 

A report of the FAO’s Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and 
Agriculture also brings out the key role of biodiversity in sustaining crop 
production: 

The world is becoming less biodiverse and there is good evidence 
that biodiversity losses at genetic, species and ecosystem levels 
reduce ecosystem functions that directly or indirectly affect food 
production, through effects such as the lower cycling of 
biologically essential resources, reductions in compensatory 
dynamics and lower niche occupation (Dawson et al. 2019, 6). 

Moreover, as a study of agro-biodiversity in India argues, “when we lose 
agricultural biodiversity, we also lose the option to make our diets healthier 
and our food systems more resilient and sustainable” (Thomson Jacob et al. 
2020, 611).2 

It is, therefore, no surprise that a recent overview of global food systems 
rightly points to the “paradox of productivity”: 

As the efficiency of production has increased, the efficiency of the 
food system as a whole – in terms of delivering nutritious food, 
sustainably and with little waste – has declined. Yield growth and 
falling food prices have been accompanied by increasing food 
waste, a growing malnutrition burden and unsustainable 
environmental degradation (Benton and Bailey 2019, 3). 

Benton and Bailey urge policy-makers to move from the traditional 
preoccupation with total factor productivity (TFP) towards total system 
productivity (TSP): 

A food system with high TSP would be sufficiently productive (to 
meet human nutritional needs) whilst imposing few costs on the 
environment and society (so being sustainable), and highly efficient 
at all stages of the food chain so as to minimize waste. It would 
optimize total resource inputs (direct inputs and indirect inputs 
from natural capital and healthcare) relative to the outputs (food 

 
2 This understanding is reflected in the National Biodiversity Mission launched by the Prime 
Minister’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council in March 2019, which 
includes a Biodiversity and Agriculture Program that “will aim to reconcile the traditional tension 
that exists between increasing food production on one hand and preserving biodiversity on 
the other. By launching a first-ever quantitative inventory of the contribution of biodiversity 
in forests, rivers, estuaries, and agro-ecosystems to India’s food and nutritional security, 
citizens will be empowered with credible information on the judicious use of bioresources” 
(Bawa et al. 2020, 3). 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [36] 

 

 

utilization). Maximizing TSP would maximize the number of 
people fed healthily and sustainably per unit input (direct and 
indirect). In other words, it would increase overall systemic 
efficiency (Benton and Bailey 2019, 7) 

In light of this understanding, attempts are being made all over the world to 
foster an ecosystem approach that ensured higher sustainability and 
resilience, lower costs of production, and economic water use along with 
higher moisture retention by soil. Broadly, these alternatives to the GR 
paradigm come under the rubric of “agro-ecology”. In the latest 
quadrennial review of its Strategic Framework and Preparation of the 
Organization’s Medium-Term Plan, 2018–21, the FAO states: 

High-input, resource-intensive farming systems, which have caused 
massive deforestation, water scarcities, soil depletion and high 
levels of greenhouse gas emissions, cannot deliver sustainable food 
and agricultural production. Needed are innovative systems that 
protect and enhance the natural resource base, while increasing 
productivity. Needed is a transformative process towards ‘holistic’ 
approaches, such as agro-ecology and conservation agriculture, 
which also build upon indigenous and traditional knowledge 
(Dawson et al. 2019, 17). 

Hecht (1995) provides an excellent summary of the philosophy underlying 
agro-ecology: 

At the heart of agro-ecology is the idea that a crop field is an 
ecosystem in which ecological processes found in other vegetation 
formations such as nutrient cycling, predator/prey interactions, 
competition, commensalism, and successional changes also occur. 
Agro-ecology focuses on ecological relations in the field, and its 
purpose is to illuminate the form, dynamics, and function of these 
relations (so that) . . . agro-eco-systems can be manipulated to 
produce better, with fewer negative environmental or social 
impacts, more sustainably, and with fewer external inputs (Hecht 
1995, 4). 

A recent overview sums up the key features of this approach: 

Over the past five years, the theory and practice of agroecology 
have crystalized as an alternative paradigm and vision for food 
systems. Agroecology is an approach to agriculture and food 
systems that mimics nature, stresses the importance of local 
knowledge and participatory processes and prioritizes the agency 



[37] Mihir Shah 
 

 

and voice of food producers. As a traditional practice, its history 
stretches back millennia, whereas a more contemporary 
agroecology has been developed and articulated in scientific and 
social movement circles over the last century. Most recently, 
agroecology—practised by hundreds of millions of farmers around 
the globe—has become increasingly viewed as viable, necessary and 
possible as the limitations and destructiveness of ‘business as usual’ 
in agriculture have been laid bare (Anderson et al. 2021, 2). 

In India, many such alternatives to the GR paradigm have emerged over the 
past two decades. The biggest example is the Community-Based Natural 
Farming programme of the Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP), 
which started in 2016. 3  Support has also been forthcoming from the 
Government of India.4 

We must also recognize that in the context of climate change, nature-
positive farming can make a huge contribution to climate adaptation and 
mitigation strategies, with agriculture accounting for 15% of India’s 
greenhouse gas emissions. According to the World Economic Forum, 
nature-based solutions have the potential to create $3,565 billion in annual 
business opportunities and 191 million jobs by 2030. 

3. BARRIERS FACING AGRO-ECOLOGICAL FARMING AND 
POLICY REFORMS TO DISMANTLE THEM 

Agro-ecological farming can, therefore, be said to comprise the following 
key, deeply inter-related defining elements: 

a. progressive elimination of chemical inputs at the appropriate pace; 
b. regenerating natural cycles for sustained yields and pest 

management; 
c. promoting crop diversification and a decisive movement away 

from the monocultures of the GR to boost resilience; 
d. focus on the productivity of the whole farm system (TSP), moving 

away from the commodity-centric approach of the GR; 

 
3 Initially called Zero Budget Natural Farming, this label, suggestive of a certain kind of 
fundamentalism and exaggeration, has now been dropped. 
4  At an event organised by the NITI Aayog on 29 May 2020, the union minister for 
Agriculture stated: “Natural farming is our indigenous system based on cow dung and urine, 
biomass, mulch and soil aeration [. . .]. In the next five years, we intend to reach 20 lakh 
hectares in any form of organic farming, including natural farming, of which 12 lakh hectares 
are under Bharatiya Prakritik Krishi Paddhati Programme” (NITI Aayog 2020).   



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [38] 

 

 

e. focus on soil health as a key determinant of the vigour of a farm 
system; 

f. reducing the demand for water for irrigation, which sky-rocketed 
after the GR and led to a major crisis. 

 
Despite the strong case for agro-ecology and all the government 
pronouncements and initiatives, we have yet to see these elements of agro-
ecology gain significant mileage on-ground in India. While robust data is 
hard to come by, it can be said with some confidence that farming under 
the broad rubric of agro-ecology (by default or deliberately) occupies only a 
minuscule portion of the total cultivated area. There are multiple barriers to 
the large-scale adoption of agro-ecological farming, and specific policy 
reforms are required to dismantle them and facilitate, support, and 
accelerate movement towards agro-ecological farming in India. 

There are at least 11 key barriers which, taken together, make it very hard 
for agro-ecological farming to grow in India. Without dismantling these 
barriers and putting in place an enabling policy framework with matching 
investments and action on the ground by state and civil society, the six key 
features of the agro-ecological approach listed prior will remain a distant 
dream. These barriers include: 

Barrier #1: Incentivizing monoculture 
Barrier #2: Uneven regional distribution of investments (“betting 
on the strong”) 
Barrier #3: Commodity-centric R&D and investments with a 
narrow vision 
Barrier #4: Pattern of subsidies favouring chemical inputs 
Barrier #5: Soil testing rooted in GR philosophy 
Barrier #6: Weak legal and regulatory frameworks governing 
chemical inputs 
Barrier #7: Collapse of farm extension and lack of understanding 
of agro-ecology 
Barrier #8: Post-harvest infrastructure challenges which militate 
against safe and nutritious food 
Barrier #9: Outmoded architecture of water governance 
Barrier #10: Absence of documentation, monitoring, and research 
making proof-of-concept harder to establish 
Barrier #11:  Agriculture education mired in GR paradigm 
 
 
 



[39] Mihir Shah 
 

 

Table 1: Share of Crops in Public Procurement, 2007–2019 (%) 

Year Rice Wheat 

 

Rice+Wheat 
Nutri-
cereals Pulses Total 

2007–08 70 29 99 1 0 100 

2008–09 58 40 98 2 0 100 

2009–10 52 41 93 7 0 100 

2010–11 53 45 98 2 0 100 

2011–12 55 44 99 1 0 100 

2012–13 47 52 99 1 0 100 

2013–14 55 43 98 2 0 100 

2014–15 53 46 99 1 1 100 

2015–16 55 45 100 0 0 100 

2016–17 61 36 97 0 3 100 

2017–18 54 44 98 0 2 100 

2018–19 37 58 95 0 5 100 

Source: DAC 2020 

Dismantling Barrier #1: Incentivizing Monoculture5 

Ever since the GR, the structure of market incentives has moved farmers 
towards monocropping with water-intensive crops. Crop diversification, a 
key element of agro-ecology, has taken a backseat. It is now widely 
recognized that the GR was simply a wheat–rice revolution.6 Over the past 
50 years, the share of nutri-cereals 7  in cropped areas has gone down 
dramatically in all parts of India. Even in absolute terms, the acreage under 

 
5 For the complete datasets of this section, please see Tables 5 and 6 in Shah et al. (2021a). 
6 Even globally, around 60% of all plant calories and proteins come from just three grass 
crops—rice, maize, wheat—even though the FAO claims that at least 30,000 of the 350,000 
known plant species on our planet are edible (Miller 2021). 
7 The Government of India took the historic decision in 2018 of renaming traditional cereals 
as “nutri-cereals”, dispensing with the long-standing nomenclature, which described them as 
“coarse cereals”, with an implicit inferior status. In a notification, the agriculture ministry 
said, “the central government hereby declares millets comprising sorghum (jowar), pearl 
millet (bajra), finger millet (ragi/mandua), minor millets – foxtail millet (kangani/kakun), 
proso millet (cheena), kodo millet (kodo), barnyard millet (sawa/sanwa/ jhangora), little 
millet (kutki) and two pseudo millets (black-wheat (kuttu) and ameranthus (chaulai) which 
have high nutritive value as ‘Nutri Cereals’” (FE Bureau, 2018). 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [40] 

 

 

these cereals has been almost halved between 1962–65 and 2012–14. The 
share of pulses has also drastically come down in the states of Assam, Bihar, 
Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, 
Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal. The share of 
oilseeds has risen, but that is mainly on account of the rise in acreage under 
soya. The share of soybean in oilseed acreage rose from less than 1% in the 
early 1970s to over 40% in 2016–17, even as the share of the other eight 
oilseeds has stagnated. Other than soybean, the only other crops showing a 
rise in acreage during the period of the GR are wheat, rice, and sugarcane. 

The rise in the acreage of wheat and rice is a direct consequence of the 
procurement and price support offered by the state. In the case of 
sugarcane and soybean, the rise in acreage is due to purchases by sugar mills 
and soya factories. However, the main story of the GR is that of rice and 
wheat, which remain the overwhelming majority of crops procured by the 
government, even after a few states have taken tentative steps towards 
diversifying their procurement baskets to include nutri-cereals and pulses.  
Even worse, public procurement still covers only a very low proportion of 
India’s regions and farmers (Khera et al. 2020). Apparently, the primary 
target of procurement is the consumer, not the farmer. Thus, procurement 
gets limited to what is needed to meet the needs of consumers. An example 
is the way imports of pulses were ramped up during 2016–18 rather than 
continuing to expand procurement as per the original plan. Farmers who 
had shifted to pulses based on that expectation suffered as a result. This 
quick resort to imports rather than procurement becomes a continual 
disincentive for crop diversification.   

India’s cropping pattern before the GR included a much higher share of 
nutri-cereals, pulses, and oilseeds. These agro-ecologically appropriate crops 
must urgently find a place in public procurement operations. As this picks 
up pace, farmers will also gradually diversify their cropping patterns in 
alignment with this new structure of incentives. The largest outlet for the 
nutri-cereals, oilseeds, and pulses procured in this manner—in line with 
POSHAN Abhiyaan8 launched by the Government of India in 2017—would 
be the supplementary nutrition and meals provided under the Integrated 
Child Development Services (ICDS) and the Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti 
Nirman Yojana (PM POSHAN)9 and the grains provided through the PDS.10 

 
8  POSHAN (PM’s Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nourishment) Abhiyaan is the 
Government of India’s flagship programme to improve nutritional outcomes among 
children and women. 
9 Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman Yojana (PM’s Nutritional Capacity Building Scheme) is 
the expanded version and new name of the earlier Mid Day Meal Scheme. 



[41] Mihir Shah 
 

 

A few state governments are slowly moving forward in this direction. The 
Odisha Millets Mission (OMM), initiated in 2017–18, works on four 
verticals—production, processing, marketing, and consumption—through a 
unique institutional architecture of partnerships with academia and civil 
society. As of 2020–21, the programme, aimed at encouraging 100,000 
farmers to cultivate millets, had spread across 76 blocks in 14 districts (Jena 
and Mishra 2021). A similar noteworthy example is that of the tribal-
dominated Dindori district in Madhya Pradesh, a malnutrition hotspot in 
recent decades. Here, a state government–civil society partnership has led 
to a revival in the cultivation of kodo (Dutch millet) and kutki (little millet), 
which are renowned for their anti-diabetic and nutritional properties. The 
Government of Madhya Pradesh’s Tejaswini Rural Women's 
Empowerment programme supports women self-help group (SHG) 
federations in developing a business plan for establishing a supply-chain for 
kodo bars and barfis (fudge), which were included in the ICDS 
Supplementary Nutrition Programme (Mathur and Ranjan 2021). These are 
the kinds of reforms and outreach all states need to pursue, with support 
from the centre. 

Thus, the first element of agro-ecology reform becomes very clear: We need 
to greatly expand the basket of public procurement to include more crops, more regions, 
and more farmers aligned with the agro-ecology of each region. At scale, this would 
enable a steady demand for these nutritious crops and help sustain a shift in 
cropping patterns, which would provide a corrective to the current highly 
skewed distribution of irrigation to only a few crops and farmers. It would 
also be a significant contribution to improved nutrition, especially for 
children, and a powerful weapon in the battle against the twin curses of 
malnutrition and diabetes. It is quite evident that a major contributor to this 
“syndemic” is the displacement of whole foods in the average Indian diet 
by energy-dense and nutrient-poor, ultra-processed food products.11 Recent 
medical research has found that some millets contain significant anti-
diabetic properties. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, 
foxtail millet has 81% more protein than rice. Millets have higher fibre and 

 
10 The recent (October 28, 2021) joint letter from the Secretary, Department of Agriculture 
and Farmers Welfare, Government of India, and Secretary, Department of School Education 
& Literacy, Government of India (D.No. 4-612018-MDM-1-1 EE.5), to the Chief 
Secretaries of all states, requesting them to explore the possibility of introducing millets 
under PM POSHAN, in the context of the UN General Assembly recently adopting a 
resolution, sponsored by India and supported by more than 70 countries, declaring 2023 as 
the "International Year of Millets", is an extremely welcome step. 
11 A 2019 report by the Lancet Commission, The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and 
Climate Change, draws attention to this phenomenon (Swinburn 2019). See also Gulati and 
Misra (2014). 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [42] 

 

 

iron content, and a low glycaemic index. Millets also are climate-resilient 
crops suited for the drylands of India. If children were to eat these nutri-
cereals—which provide a higher content of dietary fibre, vitamins, minerals, 
protein and antioxidants, and a significantly lower glycaemic index—India 
would be better positioned to solve the problems of malnutrition and 
obesity. 

To clarify, this is not a proposal for open-ended public procurement, or 
worse, the nationalization of farm trade. That would be neither feasible nor 
desirable. The argument is for diversification of the procurement basket to 
include crops suited to local agro-ecologies. Perhaps the best way would be 
to do what was proposed under the 2018 PM-AASHA scheme,12 wherein 
25% of the actual production of the commodity for that particular 
year/season (to be expanded up to 40% if the commodity is part of the 
PDS) would be procured by the government. Without such an initiative, the 
announcement of MSPs for 23 crops every year is reduced to a token ritual, 
with little benefit to most farmers. 

Dismantling Barrier #2: Uneven Regional Distribution of 
Investments (“Betting on the Strong”) 

The overarching strategy of the GR was one of “betting on the strong”, 
which meant focusing investment and support on farmers, regions, and 
crops that were seen as most likely to lead to an increase in output 
(Tomlinson 2013).  This entailed a focus on already well-endowed regions 
and farmers to create a large buffer stock of grain that could feed the whole 
country. After a point, the same GR strategy was applied uncritically 
through large swathes of the Indian countryside, irrespective of the diverse 
agro-ecological conditions prevailing in different parts of the country. This 
policy frame had countless untold consequences for the farms and farmers 
of India. One of the most deleterious outcomes of this strategy has been 
the terrible neglect of India’s rainfed areas, which currently account for 
54% of the sown area and provide 89% of the national millet production, 
88% of pulses, 73% of cotton, 69% of oilseeds, and even 40% of the rice 
production. It has been shown that there is a strong overlap between the 
incidence of poverty and rainfed regions. Thus, an inadequate emphasis on 
these regions is responsible for enduring poverty and inequality as well as 
the crises of water and nutrition security in India. 

Ever since the Green Revolution, R&D and investments reflect an 
aggravated neglect of rainfed regions, including the rich agro-biodiversity of 

 
12 Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay SanraksHan Abhiyan (PM-AASHA) is aimed at ensuring 
remunerative prices to farmers for their produce. 



[43] Mihir Shah 
 

 

these areas. Strategies for the water sector also show this bias, with an 
overwhelming focus on the construction of mega-reservoirs and flood 
irrigation, to the complete neglect of the specific needs and potential of 
rainfed regions. The key to improved productivity of rainfed farming is a 
focus on soil moisture and protective irrigation. Protective irrigation seeks 
to meet moisture deficits in the root zone, which are a result of long dry 
spells. Rainfed crops can be insulated to a great extent from climate 
variabilities through two or three critical irrigations, complemented in each 
case by appropriate crop systems and in situ water conservation. In such a 
scenario, provision needs to be made for just about 100–150 mm of 
additional water, rather than large quantities as in conventional irrigation. 

Lal (2012) provides a comprehensive list of options for increasing resilience 
in rainfed areas: 

(i) increase water infiltration; (ii) store any runoff for recycling; (iii) decrease 
losses by evaporation and uptake by weeds; (iv) increase root penetration in 
the subsoil; (v) create a favourable balance of essential plant nutrients; (vi) 
grow drought avoidance/adaptable species and varieties; (vii) adopt 
cropping/farming systems that produce a minimum assured agronomic 
yield in a bad season, rather than those that produce the maximum yield in 
a good season; (viii) invest in soil/land restoration measures (i.e., terraces 
and shelterbelts); (ix) develop and use weather forecasting technology to 
facilitate the planning of farm operations; and (x) use precision or soil-
specific farming technology using legume-based cropping systems to reduce 
losses of Carbon and Nitrogen and to improve soil fertility. Similarly, 
growing crops and varieties with better root systems is a useful strategy to 
reduce the risks in a harsh environment. The root system is important to 
drought resistance (Lal 2021, 52). 

Despite some advances in the watershed programme over the years and the 
creation of the National Rainfed Areas Authority in 2006, rainfed areas 
suffer prolonged neglect as India’s policy regime continues to be dominated 
by a GR paradigm in both water and agriculture. Continued adherence to a 
one-size-fits-all approach will not allow the expansion of an agro-ecological 
approach to farming to materialize. Shah et al. (1998) and Expert 
Committee (2019) provide a comprehensive account of the enormous 
potential of the drylands of India for livelihood generation and water and 
food security for some of India’s poorest people once we adopt a nature-
positive paradigm of development. Following these policy prescriptions 
would correct the historic injustice done to rainfed areas and make a huge 
contribution to national food and nutritional security, while also enhancing 
farmers’ welfare in a much more inclusive and sustainable manner. 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [44] 

 

 

Dismantling Barrier #3: Commodity-centric R&D and Investments 
with a Narrow Vision 

Strongly linked to barriers #1&2, is barrier #3. “Betting on the strong” has 
meant that agricultural R&D and investments have remained centred on a 
narrow vision of productivity/acre and only on a few favoured GR crops. 
Other initiatives driven by more agro-ecological considerations have not 
received the requisite support. Through careful micro-level trials and 
experimentation at their field centres, the Indian Agricultural Research 
Institute (IARI) and state agricultural universities have developed several 
crop varieties based on local germplasm that are more resilient than 
conventional GR seeds. For example, the wheat varieties Amar (HW 2004), 
Amrita (HI 1500), Harshita (HI 15231), Malav Kirti (HI8627), and Malav 
Ratna (HD 4672), developed at the IARI Wheat Centre in Indore, give 
fairly good yields at a much lower level of water consumption (Gupta et al. 
2018). Such varieties are also prescribed by the ICAR–NICRA (Indian 
Council for Agricultural Research–National Innovations on Climate 
Resilient Agriculture) project, through their district-level drought adaptation 
plans (NICRA, 2020) . These efforts need to receive a much greater 
emphasis in the overall policy scheme. Adoption of these varieties by 
farmers would require training and facilitation by Krishi Vigyan Kendras 
(KVKs) so that they are able to learn the new agronomic practices that 
these varieties involve. Their large-scale adoption could go a long way in 
reducing the water footprint of even water-intensive crops. Three thousand 
varieties of rice were being cultivated in eastern India before the GR (Shiva 
and Prasad 1993). If revived, they could play a big role in promoting nature-
positive farming, improving resilience to climate risk, and reducing water 
demand. 

Urgent steps are also needed to break the stranglehold of the commercial 
seed industry on the supply of seeds. In the case of a crop like cotton, it has 
been well documented how 

Cultivation of long season hybrid and GMO Bt-hybrid cotton is 
unique to India. The hybrid technology prevents seed saving, 
requires annual purchases of high cost seed that leads to sub 
optimal planting densities. These factors contribute to stagnant low 
yields and to increases in insecticide use that induce new pests that 
are increasingly resistant to insecticide and Bt toxins. Subsistence 
farmers growing rainfed Bt cotton in south and central India have 
been particularly affected by this hybrid technology (Gutierrez 
2018).  



[45] Mihir Shah 
 

 

Gutierrez argues for “pure line high-density short-season (HD-SS) rainfed 
cotton varieties, which would greatly increase yields, reduce yield variability, 
decrease costs of seed and insecticides and increase profits” (Gutierrez 
2018, 2206). 

It is to be hoped that the Seeds Bill 2021, currently under discussion, would 
be enacted soon and replace the GR-centred Seeds Act of 1966. A powerful 
alternative would be a massive upscaling of community seed banks. 
Community seed banks are unique efforts for collective conservation, 
production, and distribution of seeds of selected crop varieties. These banks 
provide seeds to farmers who return a certain quantity of seeds to the bank 
after harvest. These community seed banks not only help in conserving and 
reviving traditional crop species and tackling malnutrition at the community 
level, but they also reduce the dependence of farmers on companies for 
seeds. Nutrition gardens or backyard kitchen gardens would also help 
preserve seeds of traditional and nutrition-rich vegetable, fruit, and herb 
varieties. 

At the same time, we need to move away from the commodity-centric GR 
approach towards diverse biomass production systems comprising trees, 
shrubs, creepers, and fibre-producing plants with multi-year life cycles and 
multi-tiered root systems and canopies—which reduce water-use and 
increase resilience, being less sensitive to variations in rainfall. Far greater 
investments are required in this direction for agro-ecological farming to 
take firm root in India. 

Dismantling Barrier #4: Pattern of Subsidies favouring Chemical 
Inputs 

The present farm input subsidy regime, which incentivizes production with 
a high intensity of chemical inputs, must shift to one that supports the 
production of organic inputs and provides payments for farm ecosystem 
services such as sustainable agriculture practices, improving soil health, etc. 
The budgetary and other support for agro-ecology pales in comparison to 
that provided to chemical inputs. As proponents of agro-ecology argue, if 
even 50% of the subsidy for chemical inputs was to be provided to support 
agro-ecological farming, the latter could attain critical mass, which would 
enable its subsequent growth to be fairly self-sustaining. This support to 
agro-ecology would, after all, become a way to generate rural livelihoods, 
especially if the production of organic bio-inputs could be taken up at a 
large scale by federations of women SHGs and farmer producer 
organizations (FPOs). 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [46] 

 

 

An interesting beginning in this direction has been made by the National 
Coalition for Natural Farming (NCNF), some of whose partners are setting 
up Bio-input Resource Centres (BRCs). Even though farmers are aware of 
the perils of chemical inputs and the benefits of alternative bio-inputs, they 
often find it easier to buy chemical inputs from the market rather than 
invest time and energy in preparing bio-inputs. NCNF is facilitating the 
setting-up of BRCs to overcome the challenge of non-availability of bio-
inputs in the required quantities as well as the drudgery involved in making 
these bio-inputs—the burden of which largely falls on women. There are 
different models of BRCs run in an entrepreneurial fashion either by 
collectives of farmers or by individual farmers with the required skills and 
resources. BRCs undertake bulk production of bio-inputs such as 
vermicompost, pest repellents, growth boosters, etc., which are made 
available to farmers within the region. 

Governments at both the centre and the state level must promote the 
development of BRCs at a massive scale, without which the non-availability 
of bio-inputs will become a serious barrier as nature-positive farming is 
scaled up in India.13 

Dismantling Barrier #5: Soil Testing Rooted in GR Philosophy 

The GR paradigm focuses exclusively on the productivity (output/area) of a 
given crop by specifically targeting soil nutrients or pest outbreaks (Hecht 
1995). Such a view is atomistic and assumes that “parts can be understood 
apart from the systems in which they are embedded and that systems are 
simply the sum of their parts” (Norgaard and Sikor 1995, 22). It is also 
mechanistic, in that relationships among parts are seen as fixed, changes as 
reversible, and systems are presumed to move smoothly from one 
equilibrium to another. Such a view ignores the fact that often parts cannot 
be understood separately from their wholes and that the whole is different 
(greater or lesser) than the sum of its parts. It also overlooks the possibility 
that parts could evolve new characteristics or that completely new parts 
could arise (what is termed as “emergence” in soil science literature) 
(Addiscott 2010; Baveye et al. 2018; Falconer et al. 2012). As Lent (2017, 
370) argues: 

Because of the way a living system continually regenerates itself, 
the parts that constitute it are in fact perpetually being changed. It 
is the organism’s dynamic patterns that maintain its coherence. . 

 
13 It is to be hoped that the NITI Aayog Task Force on Production and Promotion of 
Organic Fertilizers and Biofertilizers will show the way forward here. 



[47] Mihir Shah 
 

 

.This new understanding of nature as a self-organized, self-
regenerating system extends, like a fractal, from a single cell to the 
global system of life on Earth (Lent 2017, 370). 

In the GR vision, soil was seen essentially as a stockpile of minerals and 
salts, and crop production was constrained as per Liebig’s Law of the 
Minimum—by the nutrient least present in the soil. The solution was to 
enrich the soil with chemical fertilizers, where the soil was just a base with 
the physical attributes necessary to hold roots: “Crops and soil were brute 
physical matter, collections of molecules to be optimized by chemical 
recipes, rather than flowing, energy-charged wholes” (Mann 2018, 2578). 

Thus, the essential questions to be posed to a continued adherence to the 
GR approach, in the face of India’s growing farm and water crises, are: 

1. Is the soil an input–output machine, a passive reservoir of chemical 
nutrients to be endlessly flogged to deliver even as it shows clear signs 
of fatigue? 

2. Or is it a complex, interacting, living ecosystem to be cherished and 
maintained so that it can become a vibrant, circulatory network that 
nourishes the plants and animals that feed it? 

3. Will a toxic, enervated ecosystem with very poor soil quality and 
structure and gravely fallen water tables be able to continue to support 
the agricultural production system? 

In the words of Rattan Lal: 

Soil is a living entity. It is full of life. The weight of living organisms 
in a healthy soil is about 5 ton per hectare. The activity and species 
diversity of soil biota are responsible for numerous essential 
ecosystem services. Soil organic matter content is an indicator of 
soil health, and should be about 2.5% to 3.0% by weight in the root 
zone (top 20 cm). But soil in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, 
Central India and Southern parts contains maybe 0.5% or maybe 
0.2%. (cited in Sharma 2020). 

According to FAO, generating 3 cm of topsoil takes 1,000 years, and if 
current rates of degradation continue, all of the world’s topsoil could be 
gone within 60 years (Arsenault 2014). Lal favours compensating farmers 

through payments (around ₹1,200 per acre per year) for soil protection, 
which he regards as a vital ecosystem service. 

It is important to understand the key relationship between soil quality and 
water productivity and recognize that every land-use decision is also a 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [48] 

 

 

water-use decision (Bossio et al. 2008). Rattan Lal (2012) explains how soil 
organic matter (SOM) affects the physical, chemical, biological, and 
ecological qualities of the soil. In physical terms, higher SOM improves the 
water infiltration rate and the soil’s available water-holding capacity. 
Chemically, it has a bearing on the soil’s capacity to buffer against pH, as 
also its ion-exchange and cation-exchange capacities, nutrient storage and 
availability, and nutrient-use efficiency. Biologically, SOM is a habitat and 
reservoir for the gene pool, for gaseous exchange between the soil and the 
atmosphere, and carbon sequestration. Ecologically, SOM is important in 
terms of elemental cycling, ecosystem carbon budget, filtering of pollutants, 
and ecosystem productivity.14 

This vision of soils implies that the soil-testing capacities of the entire 
country need to be urgently and comprehensively ramped up. This means 
not only establishing more soil-testing laboratories but also testing on a 
much wider range of parameters beyond the GR preoccupation with NPK. 
The new vision must be based on the “living soils” concept, where testing 
is extended to the 3Ms (moisture, organic matter, and microbes). This will 
also make possible a comparative assessment over time of the GR approach 
and its alternatives, so that the competing claims of different farming 
approaches can be validated as being truly “regenerative” and for arriving at 
the kinds of interventions that may or may not be required in each specific 
context. 

Dismantling Barrier #6: Weak Legal and Regulatory Frameworks 
Governing Chemical Inputs 

Even as it is clearer by the day that agrichemical inputs have disastrous 
implications for the farm system (as summarized above), the water we 
drink, the food we eat, and the air we—especially farmworkers—breathe, 
the legal and regulatory framework governing the use of these inputs 
remains weak, toothless, and ineffective. Without a greater understanding of 
the need to strengthen this framework, a move towards agro-ecological 
farming will remain stymied. It has been persuasively argued that even the 
data collection process for accidental pesticide poisoning remains undefined 
and under-focused, even though India is the fourth-largest global producer 
of pesticides (insecticides, fungicides, weedicides, and plant growth 
regulators) after the United States, Japan, and China. There is no 
comprehensive assessment of the public health risks of pesticide use in 

 
14 Several studies have documented the depletion of soil organic matter and organic carbon 
in the soils of northwest India after the adoption of the Green Revolution (Chouhan, et al. 
2012; Ghosh et al. 2017; Pal et al. 2009). 



[49] Mihir Shah 
 

 

India. Apart from farm-related risks, we have absolutely no idea about the 
exposure of children to hazardous pesticides in their homes, play areas, and 
schools. “Legal and regulatory frameworks are vague in terms of 
apportioning responsibilities between state and central governments on the 
one hand and between departments, such as public health, agriculture, 
police, and pollution control on the other” (Donthi 2021, 3). Without 
robust databases, we will not get the complete picture of the damage caused 
by agrochemical poisoning; and without strong regulation, corrective 
measures will not be taken. Without these being instituted, the need to go 
beyond the GR paradigm will remain incompletely understood.15 

Dismantling Barrier #7: Collapse of Farm Extension and Lack of 
Understanding of Agro-ecology 

It is not often adequately recognized that since the GR meant a completely 
new way of farming, the state-supported agricultural extension system 
played a critical role in making this happen at scale on the ground. Today, it 
may be quite difficult to imagine what a colossal task this was, covering 
hundreds of thousands of farmers across the length and breadth of India. 
Of course, over the years, this system has fallen into serious decay16 and is 
often replaced by commercial suppliers peddling inputs that farmers may 
not be in need of and, at times, may be way beyond their expiry date. In a 
fascinating ethnography of field marketing agents for companies like 
Monsanto in western Maharashtra, Aga (2019, 22) describes what he calls 
“advertising dressed up as extension,” how “agribusinesses create the 
demand for synthetic chemicals among farmers”, and how “marketing as 
extension lubricates industrial capital’s dominance over agricultural 
production.” These kinds of self-serving corporate marketing drives are 
what tragically pose today as farm extension and “knowledge creation” in 
many parts of India. 

If agro-ecology is to attain scale, we need a completely new vision for farm 
extension in India, different from both what it was in the heyday of the GR 
and from what it has unrecognizably degenerated into today. The paradigm 
of agricultural extension during the GR may be described as top-down, 
persuasive, and paternalistic technology transfer. If an alternative is to be 
found, great effort will be needed to re-energize and totally reorient this 
public extension system. We need to move towards a much more farmer-
to-farmer participatory extension system. Special focus must be placed on 

 
15 Pesticide regulation in India is currently under The Insecticides Act 1968. It is to be hoped 
that the new Pesticide Management Bill 2020 will be a robust replacement for this outmoded 
and toothless legislation. 
16 See, for example, this recent ethnography of agriculture extension in Punjab (Chaba 2021). 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [50] 

 

 

building a whole army of community resource persons (CRPs)—farmers 
trained in all aspects of agro-ecology, who would be the best ambassadors 
of this fresh perspective and understanding. These CRPs need to be 
empowered to respond to the multiple challenges farmers face in the 
transition to agro-ecology. They also must work in a truly “rhizomatic” 
manner, allowing for multiple, non-hierarchical points of knowledge 
representation, interpretation, and sharing. As Deleuze and Guattari (1987) 
point out, a “rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, 
between things, interbeing, intermezzo.”17 
 

Dismantling Barrier #8: Post-harvest Infrastructure Challenges that 
Militate against Safe and Nutritious Food 

A major unaddressed constraint to the expansion of agro-ecological farming 
in India is the lack of widespread and affordable facilities for testing the 
maximum residue level of chemicals, toxins, and contaminants (such as 
lead, copper, arsenic, tin, cadmium, mercury, chromium, nickel, etc.) in 
farm produce, in line with the regulations of the Food Safety and Standards 
Authority of India (FSSAI). Without this, there is no guarantee that the 
produce meets required health and safety standards. Today, the burden of 
proof of safety is squarely placed on those who claim to be engaged in 
some way or the other in non-chemical farming. This is an extremely 
uneven and unfair playing field. Only when widespread testing takes place 
will consumers be aware of whether or not they are consuming poisons, 
and, if so, exactly which ones. In the absence of the required testing 
infrastructure, this is not happening. Consumers have no idea about the 
kind of food they are eating in most cases. At the same time, studies have 
shown that the products of seven leading organic food brands in India had 
traces of heavy metals in them and some had pesticide residues as well 
(CERC 2017). This generates a crisis of credibility about those professing to 
practice alternative forms of farming. 

The only way out is massive public investments in product testing facilities, 
where contaminants, toxins, and chemical residues are all tested for. 
Currently, toxins and contaminants are rarely tested for, and even chemical 
residue testing remains fragmentary. 18  What is worse, when private 

 
17 The agriculture programme of Samaj Pragati Sahayog and the farmer-to-farmer video 
extension programme of its Community Media Unit is a great example of a women-led, 
technology-based agricultural extension system (see samajpragatisahayog.org for full details). 
18 This is despite the fact that the FSSAI clearly states that organic food shall also comply 
with relevant provisions, as applicable under the Food Safety and Standards 
(Contaminants, Toxins and Residues) Regulations, 2011 except for residues of 



[51] Mihir Shah 
 

 

commercial entities do the testing, they have a great vested interest in 
providing favourable reports, because, otherwise, they risk losing even the 
few farmers who come to them for testing. The high cost of testing a food 
sample for residues of chemical pesticides, heavy metals, and aflatoxins 
makes it difficult to test a sufficient number of samples to thoroughly 
screen batches of agricultural produce at different stages in the value chain. 
As a result, the process of certification becomes extremely cumbersome and 
expensive, beyond the reach of the vast majority of small and marginal 
farmers. This high cost is another potential impediment to farmers being 
able to adopt agro-ecological farming at scale. It is clear that individual 
farmers will never be able to afford the costs involved in the process. This 
is another area where FPOs and other collectives of small and marginal 
farmers become critical. We must also note that while these “demerit” 
goods are at least under discussion, there is virtually no recognition of the 
need to identify the positive nutritional value of food. The Nature-Positive 
Farming and Wholesome Foods Foundation (N+3F), set up in 2021, is 
pioneering work in this direction by evolving appropriate protocols to 
ensure food safety and traceability at each stage of the farm-to-plate value 
chain. It is also supporting farmer collectives in adopting these protocols 
and moving up the value chain. 

The state also needs to intervene so that neither the farmer nor the 
consumer ends up bearing the entire cost of testing. Of course, state labs 
need to function at the highest standards of excellence. The recent 
imbroglio involving the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export 
Development Authority (APEDA) is a sobering case in point (Mancombu 
2021). In July 2021, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) 
ended its 15-year agreement with the APEDA, which allowed APEDA to 
accredit agencies certifying organic exports to the US. In November 2021, 
four European Union (EU) organizations dealing with organic products 
asked the EU Committee on Organic Production to stop APEDA from 
accrediting agencies certifying organic products in India. They also asked 
the EU to delist India from the list of countries recognized for organic 
product exports to the EU and directly supervise shipments from the 
subcontinent, just like the US is doing now.19 

 
insecticides for which the maximum limits shall be 5% of the maximum limits prescribed or 
Level of Quantification (LoQ) whichever is higher (FSSAI 2017). 
19 The Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) also suffers from numerous operational and 
efficiency bottlenecks, which prevent it from being a model for scaling agro-ecological 
farming in a way that enables traceability. 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [52] 

 

 

Other areas for public investment are large-scale and separate processing 
storage (like hermetic technology),20 transport facilities for the produce of 
nature-positive farmers so that it does not get contaminated by the produce 
of conventional chemical farmers, and support for the adoption of non-
chemical pest management in post-harvest value chain stages. If we really 
want to promote crop diversification, we need improved moisture- and 
temperature-sensitive storage.  Dry and cool produce can be stored for 
longer periods. This demands major investments in new technologies that 
are now easily available. For nutri-cereals, processing remains an 
unaddressed challenge; and they also require special storage and transport 
facilities given their shelf-life issues. Public investment is also needed for 
user-focused research for developing appropriate solutions to address all of 
these challenges. 

For any transition towards sustainable solutions, we need to address the 
regime of heavily subsidised fossil fuel–based mainstream agriculture, which 
will be able to easily out-compete any alternative. If the real economic, as 
well as the ecological, costs of GR farming were to be factored into the 
calculation, along with its multiple negative externalities, the agro-ecological 
paradigm would win hands-down in comparison. Since this is an extremely 
daunting challenge, much more careful thought needs to be given to 
outlining the exact roadmap by which India will transition to a safe and 
nutritious food regime. The FSSAI has based its standards on the best 
European practices, but we need to carefully study the process through 
which our farmers can get there. This needs urgent attention and change. It 
is time now, therefore, for the NITI Aayog to set up a High-level Working 
Group to examine the entire issue of post-harvest infrastructural support 
more deeply, including product testing. This is necessary to ensure that the 
high cost of testing does not lead to a situation where the FPOs of small 
and marginal farmers get elbowed out by large corporations as the process 
of testing goes beyond the reach of these FPOs. The Terms of Reference of 
the NITI Aayog Working Group should include estimating the nature and 
volume of the public and private investment required while spelling out the 
roadmap by which India can transition to a consumer- and farmer-friendly 
regime of safe and nutritious food. 

Dismantling Barrier #9: Outmoded Architecture of Water 
Governance 

 
20  Hermetic technology uses gas-tight and moisture-tight materials to seal or store 
commodities that are prone to deterioration when exposed to air, moisture, or foreign 
objects. 



[53] Mihir Shah 
 

 

For agro-ecology to be established, and for the water crisis to be addressed, 
there must be a paradigm shift in water away from the construction- and 
extraction-centric, the command-and-control system of water governance 
towards a participatory system that incorporates the common pool resource 
(CPR) nature of water. We also need to bridge the three silos into which we 
have divided water, viz, those between: 

• surface and groundwater; 

• drinking water and irrigation; 

• water and wastewater. 

Moreover, since systems such as water are greater than the sum of their 
constituent parts, solving water problems requires understanding whole 
systems and deploying multi-disciplinary teams and a trans-disciplinary 
approach, as is the case of the best water resource departments across the 
globe. Since we have written extensively elsewhere on this issue, we will not 
get into complete detail here, for which Shah et al. (2021) would be the best 
reference. 

Without these urgent water reforms being put into place, farming in India 
will continue to be dominated by unsuitable water-intensive crops, over-
exploitation of groundwater, and vanishing rivers—all of which are 
ultimately combining to make farming an unviable occupation in India 
today. 

Dismantling Barrier #10: Absence of Documentation, Monitoring, 
and Research Making Proof-of-Concept Harder to Establish 

Whenever an argument is made in favour of seeking alternatives to GR 
farming, questions are always raised about the evidence in favour of these 
alternatives. Even though such demands are often made by vested interests 
who benefit from the current high-cost, external input–intensive, and 
energy-intensity farm systems, all votaries of agro-ecological farming must 
proactively demand that systems of documentation, monitoring, and 
research are urgently put in place at the requisite scale.21 We clearly do not 
want a new kind of mindless fundamentalism replacing the orthodoxy of 
the GR. Furthermore, the case for alternatives only gets stronger with such 
a system in place as robust proof-of-concept becomes demonstrably visible 
on the ground. It also allows proponents of alternatives to fine-tune their 

 
21 A very promising attempt at developing such a framework is to be found in Muthuprakash 
and Damani (2018). 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [54] 

 

 

solutions in line with the diverse agro-ecology of India, which is precisely 
the whole point against the one-size-fits-all fundamentalism of the GR.22 

Dismantling Barrier #11:  Agriculture Education Mired in the GR 
Paradigm 

All the reforms that we have listed above require a total re-orientation of 
the paradigm within which agricultural education is located in India today. 
Our agriculture scientists are still being trained in the mid-20th century GR 
paradigm, taking a narrow commodity-centric view focused on the limited 
question of raising crop yields per acre. Without a whole systems view of 
farming, which considers all aspects of the farm as an ecosystem with each 
and every one of its interconnected parts taken into account combined with 
an understanding of the soil as a living ecosystem, the new paradigm of 
agro-ecology cannot be instituted. Thus, both agriculture R&D and farm 
extension will need to be re-oriented on the basis of a revamped curricula 
for agricultural science education in India to align it with 21st-century 
perspectives. The new National Agricultural Education Policy provides a 
great opportunity for this radical change to be brought into effect, but even 
this proposed policy would require a complete overhauling of the paradigm 
within which agricultural education remains mired. 

4. CONCLUSION 

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic is an overdue wake-up call to 
humanity that business-as-usual is no longer an option. We cannot continue 
with development paradigms that attempt a command-and-control 
relationship with nature. COVID-19 has reminded everyone, like never 
before, how circumscribed the economy necessarily is by the nature of the 
larger ecosystem governing it.  As the imprint of humans on the planet 
grows larger than ever in the epoch of the Anthropocene, a decisive shift in 
our relationship with nature becomes imperative. 

It is not merely a matter of realizing the constraints within which we 
operate but of re-envisioning the response: moving from a paradigm of 
linear mechanics that guided the GR to thinking in terms of complex 
dynamics that underlie agroecology. We increasingly need to learn to deal 
with the unforeseen and the inherently unpredictable. The pandemic forces 

 
22  The setting up of the Indo-German Global Centre for Agro-ecology Research and 

Learning in Andhra Pradesh in 2021 is a very welcome step in this direction. 

 



[55] Mihir Shah 
 

 

everyone to acknowledge that this is now imperative, not just for greater 
prosperity but for the very survival of human life on Earth. 

Agriculture, the most important occupation of people in India, is the sector 
closest to nature. Sadly, however, even in farming, we have attempted to 
gain complete control over nature rather than seeking to align with it, even 
while harnessing its power. The dominance of chemical farming has had 
very serious, but not fully understood, consequences. According to Kate 
Brown, MIT Professor of Science, Technology and Society: 

Within the uniform predictability of modern agriculture, the 
unpredictable emerges. . Two-thirds of cancers have their origins in 
environmental toxins, accounting for millions of annual fatalities . . 
. we inhabit not the Earth but the atmosphere, a sea of life; as 
swimmers in this sea, we cannot be biologically isolated . . . 
Biologists have begun questioning the idea that each tree is an 
“individual”—it might be more accurately understood as a node in 
a network of underworld exchanges between fungi, roots, bacteria, 
lichen, insects, and other plants. The network is so intricate that it’s 
difficult to say where one organism ends and the other begins 
(Brown 2020, 7). 

More specifically, it is clear that: 

There is a large list of deadly pathogens that emerged due to the 
ways in which we practice agriculture, among which are: H5N1-
Asian Avian Influenza, H5N2, multiple Swine Flu variants (H1N1, 
H1N2), Ebola, Campylobacter, Nipah virus, Q fever, hepatitis E, 
Salmonella enteritidis, foot-and-mouth disease, and a variety of 
influenzas” (Altieri and Nicholls 2020, 2).23 

This necessitates a paradigm shift in our structures of thought and action to 
grasp complex adaptive systems (where the complexity of the behaviour of 
the whole system cannot be completely seen solely through an 
understanding of its individual parts), of which farming is a very important 
example (Holland 1998; Gal 2012). 

It is clear that India needs to make a strong move forward towards the 
agro-ecological paradigm of farming. The challenges are many, but the 
solutions and the impact pathways within which they need to be embedded 

 
23  The pandemic has also thrown sharp light on the perils of the current paradigm of 
industrial livestock production, something that is beyond the scope of the present paper but 
merits equal if not even greater attention (Wallace 2016). 

 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [56] 

 

 

are clear and have been amply demonstrated on the ground. India has seen 
strong farmers’ agitations over the past few years. Perhaps the key 
determinant of whether or not policy will move in the direction advocated 
in this paper is the adoption and strong advocacy by these farmers’ 
movements of the agenda outlined here. Another crucial factor will be the 
work of civil society organizations in close partnerships with state 
governments to create a robust proof-of-concept on the ground at scale so 
that this evidence attains the critical mass needed to move policy in the 
right direction. 

ACKNOWLDEGEMENT 
I gratefully acknowledge the careful reading of the first draft by Sanchita 
Bakshi, M Karthikeyan, Rohit Parakh, Rangu Rao, and PS Vijayshankar and 
their very useful suggestions. I would also like to thank the editors and 
anonymous reviewers of the journal for their extremely insightful inputs 
that have greatly improved the readability of the essay. 

REFERENCES 

Addiscott, TM. 2010. “Soil Mineralization: An Emergent Process?” Geoderma 160 

(1): 31–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2010.03.016  

Aga, Aniket. 2019. “The Marketing of  Corporate Agrichemicals in Western India: 

Theorizing Graded Informality.” Journal of  Peasant Studies 46 (7): 1458–1476.  

https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2018.1534833  

Ahluwalia, Meenakshi and Anupam Kaur. 2020. “Assessment of  Chromosomal 

Aberrations among Agricultural Workers Exposed to Pesticides in Punjab, India.” 

Journal of  Biochemical and Molecular Toxicology 35 (2): e22646. 

https://doi.org/10.1002/jbt.22646  

Altieri, Miguel A, ed. 1995. Agroecology: The Science of  Sustainable Agriculture. Boca 

Raton, United States of  America: Taylor and Francis. 

Altieri, Miguel A, Clara I Nicholls, Alejandro Henao, and Marcos A Lana. 2015. 

“Agroecology and the Design of  Climate Change–resilient Farming Systems.” 

Agronomy for Sustainable Development 35 (May): 869–890. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-015-0285-2. 

Altieri, Miguel A and Clara I Nicholls. 2020. “Agroecology and the Reconstruction 

of  a Post-COVID-19 Agriculture.” The Journal of  Peasant Studies 47 (5): 881–898. 

https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2020.1782891  

Anderson, Colin Ray, Janneke Bruil, M Jahi Chappell, Csilla Kiss, and Michel 

Patrick Pimbert. 2021. Agroecology Now! Transformations Towards More Just and 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2010.03.016
https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2018.1534833
https://doi.org/10.1002/jbt.22646
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-015-0285-2
https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2020.1782891


[57] Mihir Shah 
 

 

Sustainable Food Systems. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-

3-030-61315-0  

Arsenault, Chris. 2014. “Only Fifty Years of  Farming Left if  Soil Degradation 

Continues.” Scientific American, December 5. 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-

degradation-continues/ 

Baveye, Phillipe C, Wilfred Otten, Alexandra Krachenko, Balseiro-Romero María, 

Beckers Éléonore, Chalhoub Maha, Darnault Christophe, Eickhorst Thilo, Garnier 

Patricia, Hapca Simona, et al. 2018. “Emergent Properties of  Microbial Activity in 

Heterogeneous Soil Microenvironments.” Frontiers in Microbiology 9 (August): 1929. 

https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2018.01929  

Kamaljit S Bawa, Nandan Nawn, Ravi Chellam, Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Vinod 

Mathur, Shannon B Olsson, Nitin Pandit, Prabhakar Rajagopal, Mahesh Sankaran, 

R Uma Shaanker. 2020. “Envisioning a Biodiversity Science for Sustaining Human 

Well-being.” Proceedings of  the National Academy of  Sciences 117 (42).  

https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2018.01929  

Benton, Tim G and Rob Bailey. 2019. “The Paradox of  Productivity: Agricultural 

Productivity Promotes Food System Inefficiency.” Global Sustainability 2: e6. 

https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2019.3  

Bossio, Deborah, Andrew D Noble, David James Molden, and Vinay Nangia. 

2008.“Land Degradation and Water Productivity in Agricultural Landscapes.” In 

Conserving Land, Protecting Water. Comprehensive Assessment of  Water Management, edited 

by D Bossio and K Geheb, pp. 20–32. Wallingford, United Kingdom: Centre for 

Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI). 

https://doi.org/10.1079/9781845933876.0020  

Brown, Kate. 2020. “The Pandemic Is Not a Natural Disaster.” The New Yorker, 

April 13. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-pandemic-is-

not-a-natural-disaster.  

CERC. 2018. “Toxic Pesticides and Heavy Metals in Moong Dal.” India: Consumer 

Education and Research Centre. 

Chaba, Anju Agnihotri. 2021. “Less Department Staff, Lesser Motivation: How 

Agriculture Extension Collapsed in Punjab?” Indian Express, November 27. 

https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/less-department-staff-lesser-

motivation-how-agriculture-extension-collapsed-in-punjab-7644257/  

Chauhan, Bhagirath S, Gulshan Mahajan, Virender Sardana, Jagadish Timsina, 

Mangi L Jat, 2012. “Productivity and Sustainability of  the Rice-Wheat Cropping 

System in the Indo-Gangetic Plains of  the Indian Subcontinent: Problems, 

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61315-0
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61315-0
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2018.01929
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2018.01929
https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2019.3
https://doi.org/10.1079/9781845933876.0020
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-pandemic-is-not-a-natural-disaster
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-pandemic-is-not-a-natural-disaster
https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/less-department-staff-lesser-motivation-how-agriculture-extension-collapsed-in-punjab-7644257/
https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/less-department-staff-lesser-motivation-how-agriculture-extension-collapsed-in-punjab-7644257/


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [58] 

 

 

Opportunities, and Strategies.” Advances in Agronomy 117: 315–369.  

https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-394278-4.00006-4  

Corsini, E, J Liesivuori, T Vergieva, H Van Loveren, and C Colosio. 2008. “Effects 

of  Pesticide Exposure on the Human Immune System.” Human & Experimental 

Toxicology 27 (9). https://doi.org/10.1177/0960327108094509  

DAC (Directorate of  Economics and Statistics, Department of  Agriculture, Co-

operation and Farmer Welfare). 2020. Agricultural Statistics at a Glance. Delhi: 

Ministry of  Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of  India. 

https://eands.dacnet.nic.in/ 

Dawson, Ian K, Simon Attwood, Sarak Park, and Ramni Jamnadass. 2019. 

Contributions of  Biodiversity to the Sustainable Intensification of  Food Production – Thematic 

Study for The State of  the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture. Rome: FAO. 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2019.07.002  

Deleuze, Giles and Felix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and 

Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of  Minnesota Press. 

Donthi, Narasimha Reddy. 2021. “Pesticide Poisoning in India Challenges of  Data 

and Management in Public Health.” Economic and Political Weekly 12 (45–46). 

Expert Committee. 2019. Report on Policies and Action Plan for a Secure and Sustainable 

Agriculture. New Delhi: Principal Scientific Advisor, Government of  India. 

https://static.psa.gov.in/psa-

prod/publication/Report%20of%20Policies%20and%20Action%20for%20Agricul

ture.pdf  

Falconer Ruth E, Alasdair Houston, Wilfred Otten, and Philippe Baveye, 2012. 

“Emergent Behavior of  Soil Fungal Dynamics: Influence of  Soil Architecture and 

Water Distribution.” Soil Science 177 (2). 

https://doi.org/10.1097/SS.0b013e318241133a  

FE Bureau. 2018. “Government Renames Millets as Nutri Cereals”, Financial 

Express, April 21. 

https://www.financialexpress.com/market/commodities/government-renames-

millets-as-nutri-cereals/1140338/   

FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of  India). 2017 (29 December). 

Gazette Notification. New Delhi: Ministry of  Health and Family Welfare, 

Government of  India. 

Francis, Charles A, ed. 1986. Multiple Cropping Systems. London: MacMillan. 

Gal, Orit. 2012. “Understanding Global Ruptures: A Complexity Perspective on the 

Emerging Middle Crisis.” In Complex New World, edited by Tony Dolphin and David 

Nash. London: The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). 

https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-394278-4.00006-4
https://doi.org/10.1177/0960327108094509
https://eands.dacnet.nic.in/
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2019.07.002
https://static.psa.gov.in/psa-prod/publication/Report%20of%20Policies%20and%20Action%20for%20Agriculture.pdf
https://static.psa.gov.in/psa-prod/publication/Report%20of%20Policies%20and%20Action%20for%20Agriculture.pdf
https://static.psa.gov.in/psa-prod/publication/Report%20of%20Policies%20and%20Action%20for%20Agriculture.pdf
https://doi.org/10.1097/SS.0b013e318241133a
https://www.financialexpress.com/market/commodities/government-renames-millets-as-nutri-cereals/1140338/
https://www.financialexpress.com/market/commodities/government-renames-millets-as-nutri-cereals/1140338/


[59] Mihir Shah 
 

 

Ghosh, PK, KK Hazra, MS Venkatesh, and Chaitanya Prasad Nath. 2017. 

“Increasing Soil Organic Carbon through Crop Diversification in Cereal – Cereal 

Rotations of  Indo-Gangetic Plain.” Proceedings of  the National Academy of  Sciences, 

India – Section B: Biological Sciences 89 (156). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40011-017-

0953-x  

Global Hunger Index. 2021. “Global Hunger Index – India.” 

https://www.globalhungerindex.org/india.html.  

Gutierrez, Andrew Paul. 2018. “Hybrid Bt Cotton: A Stranglehold on Subsistence 

Farmers in India,” Current Science 115 (12): 2206–10. 

https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv115%2Fi12%2F2206-2210    

Gulati, Seema and Anoop Misra. 2014. “Sugar Intake, Obesity, and Diabetes in 

India.” Nutrients 6 (12): 5955–74. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu6125955  

Hecht, Susanna B. 1995. The Evolution of  Agroecological Thought. CRC Press.  

Holland, John Henry. 1998. Emergence: From Chaos to Order. Wilmington, Delaware: 

Helix Books. 

Indoria, Ashok Kumar, KL Sharma, Kotha Sammi Reddy, Srinivasrao CH, Srinivas 

Karlapudi, M Osman, Pratibha Gudapaty, NS Raju. 2018. “Alternative Sources of  

Soil Organic Amendments for Sustaining Soil Health and Crop Productivity in 

India — Impacts, Potential Availability, Constraints and Future Strategies.” Current 

Science 115 (11): 2052–62. https://doi.org/10.18520/cs/v115/i11/2052-2062  

Jena, Diptimayee and Srijit Mishra. 2021. Procurement and Public Distribution of  Millets 

in Odisha – Lessons and Challenges. RRA Policy Brief. Rainfed India.  

Jepson, Paul C, Katie Murray, Oliver Bach, Maria Bonilla, and Lars Neumeister. 

2020. “Selection of  Pesticides to Reduce Human and Environmental Health Risks: 

A Global Guideline and Minimum Pesticides List.” The Lancet Planetary Health, 4 (2):  

e56–e63. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(19)30266-9  

Khera, Reetika, Narayanan, Sudha, and Prankur Gupta. 2020. “MSP — The 

Factoids Versus the Facts.” The Hindu, December 19. 

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/msp-the-factoids-versus-the-

facts/article33367929.ece  

Lal, Rattan. 2012. “Soil Water and Agronomic Production.” In Soil Water and 

Agronomic Productivity, edited by Rattan Lal and BA Stewart. Boca Raton, United 

States of  America: CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/b12214  

Lent, Jeremy. 2017. The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of  Humanity’s Search for 

Meaning. Amherst, New York: Prometheus. 

Mancombu, Subramani Ra. 2021. “End APEDA Supervision of  Agencies 

Certifying Organic Products Export.” The Hindu – Business Line, November 10. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40011-017-0953-x
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40011-017-0953-x
https://www.globalhungerindex.org/india.html
https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv115%2Fi12%2F2206-2210
https://doi.org/10.3390/nu6125955
https://doi.org/10.18520/cs/v115/i11/2052-2062
https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(19)30266-9
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/msp-the-factoids-versus-the-facts/article33367929.ece
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/msp-the-factoids-versus-the-facts/article33367929.ece
https://doi.org/10.1201/b12214


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [60] 

 

 

Mann, Charles C. 2018. The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Ground Breaking Scientists and 

their Conflicting Visions of  the Future of  our Planet. New York: Penguin. 

Margni, Manuele, D Rossier, P Crettaz, and Olivier Jolliet. 2002. “Life Cycle Impact 

Assessment of  Pesticides on Human Health and Ecosystems.” Agriculture, Ecosystems 

& Environment 93: 379–392. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-8809(01)00336-X  

Mathur, Meeta and Sujeet Ranjan. 2021. “Can Magic Millets Provide a Solution for 

Malnutrition?” Outlook, February 21. 

https://poshan.outlookindia.com/story/poshan-news-can-magic-millets-provide-

a-solution-for-malnutrition/374898 

Miller, Norman. 2021. “The Forgotten Foods that Could Excite Our Tastebuds.” 

BBC. https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/the-forgotten-

plants-that-could-excite-our-tastebuds  

Muthuprakash, Siva and Om Damani. 2018. “Development & Application of  Farm 

Assessment Index: Towards A Holistic Comparison of  Organic and Chemical 

Farming.” Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems.  

NICRA. 2020. National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA). 

New Delhi: Indian Council of  Agricultural Research. http://www.nicra-

icar.in/nicrarevised/index.php/project-details. 

Nicolopoulou-Stamati, Polyxeni, Sotirios Maipas, Chyrsanthi Kotampasi, Panagiotis 

Stamatis, and Luc Hens. 2016. “Chemical Pesticides and Human Health: The 

Urgent Need for a New Concept in Agriculture.” Frontiers in Public Health 4: 148. 

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2016.00148. 

NITI Aayog. 2020. “Agroecology and Natural Farming Could Accelerate Inclusive 

Economic Growth in India”. New Delhi: Press Information Bureau. 

https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1628285. 

Norgaard, Richard B and Thomas O Sikor. 1995. The Methodology and Practice of  

Agroecology. CRC Press. 

Pal, Dilip Kumar, Tapas Bhattacharyya, Pankaj Srivastava, P Chandran, and SK Ray. 

2009. “Soils of  the Indo-Gangetic Plains: Their Historical Perspective and 

Management.” Current Science 96 (9). 

Repetto, R and SS Baliga. 1996. “Pesticides and Immunosuppression: The Risks to 

Public Health.” Health Policy and Planning 12 (2): 97–106. 

https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/12.2.97  

Shah, Mihir. 2013. “Water: Towards a Paradigm Shift in the Twelfth Plan.” Economic 

and Political Weekly 48 (3), January 19. 

Shah, Mihir. 2017. “Farmer Protests: Over-reliance on a Single Crop Has Cost 

Them Dear.” Hindustan Times, 27 June. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-8809(01)00336-X
https://poshan.outlookindia.com/story/poshan-news-can-magic-millets-provide-a-solution-for-malnutrition/374898
https://poshan.outlookindia.com/story/poshan-news-can-magic-millets-provide-a-solution-for-malnutrition/374898
https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/the-forgotten-plants-that-could-excite-our-tastebuds
https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/the-forgotten-plants-that-could-excite-our-tastebuds
http://www.nicra-icar.in/nicrarevised/index.php/project-details
http://www.nicra-icar.in/nicrarevised/index.php/project-details
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2016.00148
https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1628285
https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/12.2.97
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/here-s-why-farm-protests-have-been-loudest-in-punjab-haryana/story-G18qzwYWo7UuvrFmb06xuK.html


[61] Mihir Shah 
 

 

news/here-s-why-farm-protests-have-been-loudest-in-punjab-haryana/story-

G18qzwYWo7UuvrFmb06xuK.html 

Shah, Mihir. 2019. “Water Reform Must Begin at the Farm.” Business Standard, 7 

June. https://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/water-reform-must-

begin-at-the-farm-119060700054_1.html  

Shah, M, D Banerji, PS Vijayshankar, and P Ambasta. 1998. India’s Drylands: Tribal 

Societies and Development through Environmental Regeneration. New Delhi: Oxford 

University Press. 

Shah, M, PS Vijayshankar, and Francesca Harris. 2021. “Water and Agricultural 

Transformation in India: A Symbiotic Relationship.” Economic and Political Weekly 56 

(29). 

Sharma, Manraj Grewal. 2020. “Rattan Lal: Soil, a Living Being, Can Boost Farm 

Output, Mitigate Climate Change,” Indian Express, 23 June. 

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/world-food-prize-winner-rattan-lal-soil-a-

living-being-can-boost-farm-output-mitigate-climate-change-6470075/  

Shiva, V and R Prasad. 1993. Cultivating Diversity: Biodiversity Conservation and Seed 

Politics. Dehradun: Natraj Publishers. 

Swinburn, Boyd A, Vivica I Kraak, Steven Allender, Vincent J Atkins, Phillip I 

Baker, Jessica R Bogard, Hannah Brinsden, Alejandro Calvillo, Olivier De Schutter, 

Raji Devarajan, et al. 2019. “The Global Syndemic of  Obesity, Undernutrition, and 

Climate Change.” The Lancet Commissions 393 (10173): P791–846.  

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)32822-8 

Tamburini, Giovanni, Riccardo Bommarco, Cherico Wanger, Claire Kremen, 

Marcel G A Van Der Heijden, Matt Liebman, and Sara Hallin. 2020. “Agricultural 

Diversification Promotes Multiple Ecosystem Services Without Compromising 

Yield.” Science Advances 6 (45). 

Thomson Jacob, C, Ajay Parida, and NK Krishna Kumar. 2020. “Conservation of  

India’s Agrobiodiversity Towards Increasing Food, Nutritional and Livelihood 

Security.” Current Science 119 (4). https://doi.org/10.18520/cs/v119/i4/607-612  

Tomlinson, BR. 2013. The Economy of  Modern India from 1860 to the Twenty-First 

Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139108638  

Vandermeer, John H. 1989. The Ecology of  Intercropping. Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511623523  

Vijayshankar, PS, Himanshu Kulkarni, and Sunderrajan Krishnan. 2011. “India’s 

Groundwater Challenge and the Way Forward.” Economic and Political Weekly 46 (2). 

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/here-s-why-farm-protests-have-been-loudest-in-punjab-haryana/story-G18qzwYWo7UuvrFmb06xuK.html
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/here-s-why-farm-protests-have-been-loudest-in-punjab-haryana/story-G18qzwYWo7UuvrFmb06xuK.html
https://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/water-reform-must-begin-at-the-farm-119060700054_1.html
https://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/water-reform-must-begin-at-the-farm-119060700054_1.html
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/world-food-prize-winner-rattan-lal-soil-a-living-being-can-boost-farm-output-mitigate-climate-change-6470075/
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/world-food-prize-winner-rattan-lal-soil-a-living-being-can-boost-farm-output-mitigate-climate-change-6470075/
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)32822-8
https://doi.org/10.18520/cs/v119/i4/607-612
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139108638
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511623523


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [62] 

 

 

Wallace, Robert G. 2016. Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Influenza, Agribusiness 

and the Nature of  Science. Monthly Review Press. 

WHO. 2011. Nitrate and Nitrite in Drinking Water. New Delhi: World Health 

Organization. 

 


