Romance and Reality of Traditional Agriculture

August 24, 1985 Romance and Reality of Traditional Agriculture Bharat Dogra WHILE the government's agricultural development efforts continue to be based on propagation of high-yielding varieties (HYVs) grown with large doses of chemical fertilisers, there has nevertheless been a revival of interest in traditional agricultural systems and methods. The wisdom, specially avoidance of waste, of the traditional agricultural practices has been upheld on the basis of records of such practices going back to the last century, if not earlier. Side by side or within this trend, the virtues of natural farming against the chemical and machinery based farming of the green revolution type have been stressed. Indeed some writers have gone a step further and stressed natural farming to the extent of there being no tillage. In this context Masanobu Fokuoka's work (and his book "One Straw Revolution") and smaller experiments in India have been much discussed. Needless to add, after the Bhopal tragedy, the questioning of the necessity of agri-chemicals, and more specifically chemical pesticides, has received an additional impetus, although again this does not seem to be reflected in official thinking.