India’s food output increased at an unparalleled rate during the early years of what is now known as the Green Revolution (GR), and agricultural incomes also significantly increased.
Key elements of this high-input technology included high yielding seed varieties, chemical fertilisers, reliable irrigation, and pesticides. However, the increase in food production has come at a cost, including the long-term effects on farmers’ and consumers’ health, groundwater depletion, land degradation, stagnant yields, and loss of agri-biodiversity.
Farmers, legislators, and agri-scientists are all coming to the conclusion that the GR has reached its limits and highlighted a number of sustainability-related challenges.
The transition from resource-intensive to sustainable agriculture is now necessary. This realisation is reinforced by the Budget 2022–2023 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent demand to integrate agriculture with nature’s laboratory and remove it from chemical laboratories.