Benchmarking the performance of organic farming in India

• Published date: 01 May 2021
• Author: Anup Kumar Yadava,Jadi Bala Komaraiah
• Date: 01 May 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2208

ACADEMIC PAPER

Benchmarking the performance of organic farming in India

Anup Kumar Yadava | Jadi Bala Komaraiah

Department of Economics, Banaras Hindu

University, Varanasi, India

Correspondence

Anup Kumar Yadava, Department of

Economics, Banaras Hindu University,

Varanasi, India.

Email: anupk.yadav3@bhu.ac.in;

anupyadavbhu@gmail.com

This study set out to measure the performance of organic farming in India. The study

utilized data of 21 Indian states for the period 2016–2017, and the states are consid-

ered as decision making units for performance assessment. In the first step, we com-

pared the “pure organic production”or “production technology set A”with the

“production including the conversion period”of organic farming or “production tech-

nology set B”by incorporating the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method of per-

formance evaluation. In the second step, we estimated the performance of “pure

organic production”and applied the bootstrap DEA method to correct the biasness

in the traditional DEA approach. The input-oriented DEA model reveals that on aver-

age technical efficiency of organic farming production is 84.7%, and the output-ori-

ented DEA model concludes 20% technical efficiency which means organic farming

production can be increased by 80% with the same amount of inputs utilization. Evi-

dence is presented in the conclusion which shows that organic farming practice is

highly beneficial for land degraded states of India. The findings can contribute to

implement policies for organic farming production in Indian states.

1|INTRODUCTION

The concern of agricultural sustainability needs to adopt such tech-

niques that do not affect the environment and food adversely. Mod-

ern agricultural practices and irrational use of chemical fertilizers have

seen as critical for sustainable food production (Reddy, 2010). The

major challenge for today's agriculture system is to minimize the

trade-off between productivity and sustainability (Niggli, 2014), and in

this regard, organic farming practice works as a method of farming

that is less input-driven with better environmental, health, and soil

productivity. India has inherent traditional features for organic farming

and high potential of organic production due to its agroclimatic factors

(Amarnath & Sridhar, 2012), and organic farming is more beneficial for

dryland areas, but the modernization of agricultural practices espe-

cially after the green revolution has led to heavy use of chemical fertil-

izers (Arandia & Aldanondo-Ochoa, 2008). The global race of heavy

production and pure competitive environment of agricultural market

leaded India toward intensive chemical fertilizers based agricultural

practices and organic farming practices become obsolete. Numerous

reasons behind the failure of organic farming practices in India can be

quoted here, and it is clear that the failure of government policy assis-

tance is the major reason behind it.

Now, the government of India (GoI) has started different schemes

and programs for organic farming promotion and these initiatives

plinth India at the position of the highest number of organic producers

and placed at the second position in the number of affiliates of the

International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM)

with 47 affiliates, but still, the share of India's organic production in

world trade is about 1%, and the area share under organic farming of

total farmland was only 0.99% in 2017 (FiBL-IFOAM, 2019). The

recent initiatives by GoI and various Non-profit Organisations (NGOs)

effectively helped the farmers to adopt organic farming practice which

is cost-efficient, sustainable for land productivity, enhance biodiver-

sity and reduce energy use in production (Djokoto, 2015; Ramesh,

Singh, & Rao, 2005). India is poised with the faster-growing domestic

market and successful organic farming practices linked with growth

and its own domestic as well as export market. Public institutions

driven schemes like—National Programme for Organic Production

(NPOP), Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY), and different Non-

profit Organisations (NGOs) are potentially working for expansion of

organic farming in India. The light of the Public Guarantee System-

India (PGS-India)

1

to support organic farming practice is now spread-

ing over maximum Indian states. In the PGS system, the farmers are

pooled in a group that collectively share the knowledge about

Received: 22 February 2020 Revised: 16 April 2020 Accepted: 26 May 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2208

J Public Affairs. 2021;21:e2208. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 1of8

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2208