welcome to the farmis in show where we uncover the delicious interplay between food farming and wellness shaping a brighter healthier Community better for Farmers better for the planet better for you let's dig hi everybody welcome to another episode of the fisan show and uh today we have somebody who very very exciting and inspirational as well in fact he was one of the uh Inspirations behind starting fisan as well I mean I had watched his video you might have seen many of his uh TED Talks he has I think six TED Talks which are there uh if you are somebody who is worried about poison in your food who things about Farmers you would not have missed his talk uh he might have also seen him in uh the Amir Khan show sat where where he went ahead and talked a lot about uh organic farming what's going on with uh uh pesticides Etc so welcome uh Raman Janu GV uh let's call him Mr ramu from now on so thank you so much sir for us this opportunity to talk to you and welcome again thanks sh it's pleasure as always yeah so I think uh uh one of the things I'm actually going to challenge you on a few Dimensions uh most of our viewers on the farmies and show channel are essentially people who are uh either Progressive Farmers or who want to get back into farming right so most of them have developed that sensitivity they might not already be doing farming but they have developed that sensitivity of oh where is my food coming from it's important uh and so on and so forth now uh I think there are few doubts or questions that always get asked by folks so the first thing that always gets asked is see this organic farming thing uh organic natural farming is this something which is just for the elite you know can we actually Feed the World with it can we feed India with it and I think a lot of the concerns are also coming from the fact of uh like people talk about what happened in Sri Lanka right where there was a uh big hit on the economy because of a certain abrupt move to organic so what's your take on that can organic really feed the world or is it something that you know uh we are doing but we have to be cognizant that it'll be a 5% 10% thing but we will still need uh conventional farming okay uh I'll take this from two different dimensions one is about uh I'll ask the same question uh slightly different I would say can chemical agriculture feed the world let's start from that so we can understand what is the need to move that's one thing second what is the context we are talking about I think that's second one we need to talk about what is the context uh the whole discussion is happening these are the two things we need to talk about conventional agriculture which is largely dependent on monoculture of crops uh by use of chemicals and energy and water if you look at from that point of that's what today is uh the Agriculture and second long-distance trade so in terms of uh grow where it is efficient sell where it is profitable so that's how the supply chains are built and uh support uh from the government where new technologies are there and which are expensive so invest in external inputs and external knowledge kind of things so these are the three premises on which the conventional agriculture is built and that if we look at today I would say let's take the case of chemicals in India we use uh huge quantity of chemicals I would say across the country fertilizers chemical fertilizers if you take the budget is somewhere around three and half lakh crores and on average per acre it comes to somewhere around 7,000 rupees and per household it comes to somewhere around 25,000 rupees if you go by average landh holding of the country and cultivating Farmers if you go by that point and certainly the income is not that much so you're investing more and you're not getting equal out of it and what is the use efficiency of the fertilizers it's just 15% use efficiency is 15% means 85% is going into the environment you're polluting so the biggest pollutant is actually nitrous oxide compared to even carbon dioxide nitrous oxide is the biggest pollutant and this is 310 times having global global warming potential 310 times higher than carbon dioxide so one ton of nitrous oxide is 310 times more dangerous than carbon and the nitrates interesting and how is the is does it have a how much time does it stay in the atmosphere does it get remove from the atmosphere quickly or does it take a long time no at least carbon dioxide is taken out by trees nitrous oxide is not taken out so obviously it stays in the environment and it has a global warming for 100 years so obvious going to be a significant impact on the environment uh second you're fun you're supporting you're fin funding it you're actually subsidizing it so if you are looking at every kg of chemical fertilizer used nitrogenous fertilizer every kg use 1.2 kg of nitrous oxide for every 100 kg of chemical fertilizer nitrogenous fertilizer used in the farm 100 kg 1.2 kg of nitrous oxide is emitted it looks just 1% right but each kg of nitrous oxide emal to 300 kg of carbon dioxide which means every quintal of chemical fertilizer used has three quintals of carbon dioxide emitted right so you actually polluting the environment significantly and on every kg 47 every kg 47 rupes is the subsidy which is available so on every ton 47,000 Rupees is the subsidy which means here 300 quintals of uh or 300 tons of uh uh nitrus oxide which is coming in from every one ton of chemical fertilizer is subsidized by 47,000 rupees by government is it responsible is it right effectively is one question that's what is creating the climate change Bangalore for Viada floods if you're looking at floods droughts all these are because of the climate change second question what is the productivity of the chemical fertilizers what is the productivity of chemical fertilizer often this question is never addressed we are talking about Sri Lanka but what happened in India every kg of chemical fertilizer used to give 13.4 kg of grain in 1970 today it is less than 3.5 I'm talking about data is available only up to 2005 we in 2024 2.4 2.5 kg per every kg of fertilizer used which means you have to use five times the same amount of fertilizer to five times the fertilizer to get the same level of yield and so if you look at this data set shows that in 1970s the yields which we have seen as a jum is not just because of the fertilizer used and the seeds which are used also because of the soil organic matter present you depleted all that and today you lost this is the second Point third Point yeah so from from 4% if we take it down to 3% and after that if we expect the fertilizers to work as effectively it won't work right because the nutrients see you only putting in nitrogen what about other nutrients what about other other nutrients have to sources no other option for that that's the second Point third Point uh we were try to look at the National Institute of nutrition data n publishes nutrition tables which talks about what does Indian food contains so between 2007 [Music] 20 70 so 30 years data was taken and then published in 2017 the previous 30 years data so in 30 years nearly 30 40% of the nutrients are depleted so if you take the same spinach spinach was more nutritive 30 years back compared to today rice was 30 years same variety of rice was more nutritive 30 years back compared to today so every fruit every vegetable every fruit every grain nutrients are depleted why does there is a nutrient depletion it is because your soils doesn't have if you're talking about iron deficient soils obviously your crop is iron deficient your people are iron deficient so if you actually map the anemic areas in the country they are the areas where soils are enic your people are enic because your soils are anemic so the course correction is actually correcting the soils not adding iron to your food third third more dangerous study I think I would say more shocking study came from none other than icr icr published a paper this January this was published in nature they published a paper which talks about because of the ways seeds are managed maintained they are unable to take nutrients if they're present so even if the nutrients are present in the soil plants are unable to take so they unable to take the nutrients on the contrary they're taking the heavy metals and otherx heavy metals and toxins they're taking more so in the last why is that is is it because is it is it is it because of hybrid seeds Etc versus breeding mechanism so you're not breeding properly you're not doing enough of Diversified breeding and when you're selecting you're only looking at yield you're not looking at other qualities and you're not maintaining the lines and all that led to a situation where nearly 30 to 40% depletion in nutrient happened so if you look at putting it all these things together leave a said water we'll talk about water later leave a said water just look at from this you started with a premise that you have a yielding varieties will increase the yield and you said adding chemical fertilizers will increase the yield and where did we land where we land your Factor produc has come down significantly and when the factor productivity comes down what is left to the environment is polluting global warming water pollution all these are happening and finally the whole effort is to produce nutrients right you're trying to convert food the soil nutrients into nutrient in the food and that you failed both because of your soil management and also because of the breeding problem breeding and Seed management system so that's where we stand today so we are producing food which doesn't have NRI interesting the natural resources which are over there uh are not sustainable so that's the context we need to remember Sri Lanka was 3 years back and Sri Lanka couldn't afford to continue the same M of subsidies and chemical fertilizers they took a decision that they they will avoid it and move towards natural Farm India is still able to subsidize it because we had somebody is there to give us loan so we are able to take the loans and then build on that instead of investing in right side right areas in agriculture we are investing on the chemical but that's the situation India is but Sri Lanka was not in that situation so Sri Lanka took that decision so it's not that was in a bad situation India is much worse situation Sri Lanka couldn't afford so they took a decision so Sri Lanka couldn't get time to design a transition failure is there failure comes from not designing the transition properties they were already in a compulsion the Tea Gardens are badly affected their rice is badly affected they're putting in more fertilizer which is not yielding and then their inded was increasing 85% of their total budget was spent on paying the foreign currency reserves and in that fertilizer is the major thing so they didn't want to do that so when that was a situation pretty soon India will land in the same situation so should we wait till then or should we take a decision today so that we have a time to make the transition right so that is the that's what I would say second is about the water see when India got independence second water when India got independence nearly 85 % of rice was a rainfed rice we had a diversity of crop production we got into 100% rice into ponding water and that destroyed the soils to hold the water you start puddling the soils so soils are destroyed and you add more fertilizer so there's more of salinity happening you're pumping out groundw groundw depletion and the methane emissions and if you all put together that's nearly 78% of emissions from rice and 20% are from rice and then others are from the dams Etc so 17% also from dams Etc so you are not we can't continue with the same kind of rice production anymore right rice and water sugar cane if you look at all the drops which are increasing area they're all high water intensive crops so we also need to work on reducing the water use right I would say these two if you look at chemical use and water use how do we address I think that is the question so question is not about organic fun question is about how long we are going to afford the same amount of chemicals and water and then how are we moving away from that see if three and half lakh cres is spent on chemical fertilizers and only 10% is efficient 10 or 15% is efficient 85% is causing your global warming are you going to continue with that so what are your opportunities to rce it I think that's a question got it cool excellent so I think that already gives me gives rise to a bunch of different questions in my mind followup questions to that which I'm going to ask you now so so the first thing is around uh you mentioned for example that all of this nutrient uh nutrient deficiency that's occurring right we are basically creating a lot of empty calories right there's not enough vitamins in them compared to before and things like that so I think uh couple of things the observations I wanted to kind of make one is that there is always a lack of data points which proes some of these things right like you will find many times you'll find either some anecdotal or just one or two research items whereas there is just so much of research around oh yield if you put this fertilizer what happens to the yield Etc but some of these very basic questions how does you know uh regenerative or organic farming or sustainable farming how does it improve the nutrient density in your food right there is a rodel Institute study for example right long-standing study which kind of goes into some of those but I think not enough is being done on that right I guess my guess is it's probably because you know uh I mean there is not a big corporate Lobby perhaps which has vested interest in proving the other side of things I don't know is that the reason why there's not enough research which I which we see around which basically proves that there is a better me better method of farming no see issue is about whose responsibility is to generate data see question is that who who is responsible because there's a in India there's a India has the largest national agricultural res system they are supposed to generate the data right and all the data sets which we are talking about talking about the problem but they're not investing on Solutions see problem is uh all your analysis shows that soils are getting depleted but there is agronomic research to improve yes right and they are asking uh the organic farming proponents or Farmers where is the data but where is your data we show that it doesn't work or where is the data which shows that your fertilizers can provide all the nutrients you see the data which I mentioned is the data published by icr if it is saying Factor productivity of fertilizer is going down if National agriculture Academy says the factor productivity of fertilizers are going down whose data is required further that's what you need to act on if you if you read the last parliamentary standing comme report on talks about India cannot afford this kind of nuance standing committee talks about it but where is the decision taken on that we simply postponing the decisions question is that uh question is people decision makers are not confident they're not confident because they never did anything around it then then the option is about the decision to someone who can take confidently or you change the way you work right that's a unfortunate part of in India the decision makers are not the ones who knows the solutions and they're trying to take decisions in which they don't believe in right they don't believe in so they're not it's B system yeah and sometimes we try to fix the symptoms and not the core problem one example of that perhaps is this whole initiative around fortification of our Foods right so the government is recognizing that yes nutrient density in our food is going down huh see every problem we try to look see reconstruction is a big business obviously this is also like that see if nutrient deficiencies are a problem we need to figure the nutrient deficiencies are coming from and just adding iron into right doesn't help yeah so that I think we have a very reductionistic approach so issue lies in the scientific system their reductionistic approach lack of holistic understanding of the problem and lack of scientificity I would say there's no scientificity in the scientific system most unscientific uh decisions are taken by them so that is the issue but what is a from a consumer's perspective or from a farmer's perspective uh like what is the issue with fortification I mean see at a very outset it seems like oh great there is a deficiency we need to make sure people get this uh zinc or iron or whatever so it's going to take time to fix our soils we understand that it's a problem so let's go ahead and 45 this so what do you think I mean from a is there an issue with this from a consumers or from a farmers perspective yeah see uh See the problem I I think uh the food is not understood properly what is fortification fortification is actually adding it right basically adding it and look at all your menus all your menu recipes of your food they're all actually fortification right say if something is not there in the in a particular ingredient they will add one more ingredient which has that so right your your final food will have all the nutrients because of the the recipe Why do you add little bit of oil because you add some nutrients in the form of oil you add some in the form of your tempering some you add in the form of Curry Leaf some you add in the so this basically it's a you're putting all them all of them together that's what is fortification about right you add see basic Bally each ingredient doesn't have the enough of nutrients so you put them together that's how you make the your recipes right artificially adding nutrients has some serious problems serious problems is whether required or not you are actually adding the nutrient there whether it is required or not second what is happening later on is not understood properly I'll take two three examples and explain so for example there's a vitamin a defently happening right there's vitamin A deficiency vitamin A deficiency to blindness basically night blindness blindness all these comes from the vitamin A deficiency but why does vitamin A deficiency comes in two reasons one either your food doesn't have enough of vitamin A or your body is unable to absorb and utilize it properly these are the two conditions in which vitamin A happens let's take the first case your food is doesn't have because you're are not eating enough of carrots and other Foods basically which has more vitamin A you and food per se doesn't have vitamin A food will have precursors of vitamin A which means your body has to synthesize vitamin A from the precursors which are present in the food so your food doesn't have precursor so obviously your body is unable to make it your food has but your body is unable to make it these are the two things so when you're looking at precursors and then the nature of vitamin A vitamin A is a fat soluble vitamin so you should also have enough of fats to make it available and now there's a technology came in called Golden rice where you engineer to produce vitamin A in the plant so plant will have precursors but to absorb it and then have it you also need to have enough of fat and if you have and where does the fat come from fat comes from the oils and if you have enough of oils consumed not a vitamin A deficiency vitamin A deficiency started because you're not consuming enough of Ed oil right so you're solving an impossible problem getting and then you it's not sufficient to eat golden rice but you need to have a gold rice which is fried or enough of oil as to be added and how much quantity it very little quantity so obviously you need to supplement from other sources that's a issue second the amount of any genetic technology any genetic technology depends on the environment you see you can induce a character but the expression of character depends on the environment so you can engineer it to produce vitamin A but how much vitamin A is produced depends on the environment and today the deficiencies are coming because environment is not good you're saying that you solve with the genetic engineering and look at BT coton for example you can you can introduce a to produce BT toxin but how much B toxin will be produced depends on the environment so finally it can be zero to three times four times kind of thing so so issue is that so you're getting into something which is not problem second bio fortification can also be done by just adding chemicals it's not just adding the engineering the plant but you can also add only by adding the chemicals say now what is happening in the name of with this iron iron fortification and then vitamin E for happening all over it is made mandatory you could have left it as option right you're adding it and I can make a choice in terms of whether uh buy this or not buy this you're making it mandatory by right mandatory what is happening is you're increasing the quantity you're increasing the quantity of intake when the the moment you increase the qu of intake can become toxic it can become toxic also see right people are not understanding these right even if you if you look at if you look at even if you look at plant nutrients right everything there's a deficiency range there's a sufficiency range and then there's a toxicity range almost 80 90% of all of these nutrients right there is a toxicity range too much of magnesium will also cause a problem you know and many of them also have interactions with each other right calcium magnesium iron like phosphorus if you have too much of phosphorus zinc will not become a right so these interactions are also there and I mean what is really shocking and surprising is that first of all we don't even understand human nutrition every year there's a fat diet which comes up right and sometimes people say oh ketto is great sometimes people say intermittent fasting is great sometimes people say some dietician famous dietician says you should eat five times six times a day some dietician says you eat once a day right so and in this sort of a situation where we don't even understand our nutrition they are taking a very very reductionist single point approach to plant nutrition also which by the way are anywhere related is actually a shocking thing I mean I remember a story from Tamil say some 40 years back or so when I in my childhood you know these fish capsules were supplied to the students to add on vitamin A into the food okay fish capsule fish oil capsules are something okay and if people already has if people already has good vitamin A in their body it can become toxic as well so it is made mandatory for everyone to consume and like I mentioned vitamin A is a fat soluble one so it lays is stays in the body unlike vitamin B vitamin B is a water soluble vitamin so whatever you eat that day will be useful and then rest of it goes into your urine whereas vitamin A stays in your body so if it gets accumulated it can become toxic as well there was a toxic uh case happened Tamil Nadu few decades back where several children were hospitalized because of that and all this can happen see Iron also can happen like that so you're getting into something which you don't know see better do things which you know isn't it why are you getting into things which you don't know and in extreme cases supplementation is possible but don't make it mandatory see in extreme cases if you want to do supplementation do are you doing it mandatory why are you doing that see iodin I remember uh we bought a big case on iodin uh when Iden fortification was made mandatory if you remember in 95 or so uh somebody came with a bright idea saying Iden deficiency is causing goer and then also salt is a easy way to add the iodin so they made it mandatory that iodin only iodin salt can be sold common salt is band this is what government took a decision so we actually I was a student that time and then some of us from as a students and then some activists and all we got together and try to understand the problem then when we looked at it it was banned under food adulteration act common salt is banned under food adulteration act common is something which is available over and how can you prevent it under food adulation act iodin salt is the one where you are adding adting it you may be doing it a good intention but you are actually adulating the common salt and you're saying that is good and then you're Banning this one second see iodin right iodin where is iodin deficiency in the country across if you look at it's located in small Pockets right and how salt is consumed very little is consumed in your C right rest of it is used in the food right and when you add salt to Food iodin Salt to the food what happens iodin is a sublimating substance so when you heat your food it evaporates we are not like the west where you sprinkle salt on the food and eat we actually add salt into the cooking food then what happens it evaporates so put salt in your dll it becomes bluish and then it evaporates so Iden is evaporating you're eating the regular salt what is the point in that and when they Chang the advertisements saying it is not 15 PPM now we will make it 33 PPM for evaporation and sublimation whether you make it 15 33 or 45 how does it matter but because of the the entire common Sal so I'm saying it's very reductionistic in understanding unfortunate problem is as Citizens as we never make connections between in school all of us read ID is ating subance it changes it shape from the moment you heat it there's no liquid form of IOD it operates but if somebody tells you uh right in Sal supplies I in for you we all trust which means we are not applying our right right we don't even question we don't even question we have yeah we have got so tuned to okay whatever people are saying let's just now we say Farmers doesn't understand farmers are illiterate are you are the science teachers literate or the consumers who had uh nutrition degrees are literate are you taking right decisions based on your own that is an issue simple question right if your soil doesn't have nutrients does and in fact I remember like like I mean even after doing like a btech and MBA and all of that stuff most of us forgotten whatever we learned in class five or six carbon cycle nitrogen cycle all of these things we have actually forgotten you know which we used to know at that point of time that's that's the point that is the issue issue is it's very interesting your education is largely distanced from reality and it doesn't give you power to take right decisions and that is true from a child to a vice Chancellor of a university that is a problem everybody's like that right right right right right so let's uh shift gears a little bit and uh let's talk a little bit about so uh uh Center for sustainable farming has worked with and enabled like some 60,000 70,000 Farmers right so I think what is very exciting about this and watching your journey from a long time is that uh you know one man can also make a change which is a very important angle I obviously you are not one man you have your colleagues you uh have support from a bunch of people and things like that but I mean the fact that one person uh you know can kind of talk about things then get a lot of people AC activated excited about it then and you can actually make some some sort of a change as well in terms of actual numbers because see agriculture when you start getting into it it feels like oh it's too vast too many different things are broken everything is interdependent on each other but everything is broken so I mean it reminds me of that movie I think there's one movie b or something like that there was one movie which came off so which is I think very interesting so uh which is very interesting because see Let Me Explain see when we started CSA 20 years back um we started with the premise that sorry we started with the premise that there are solutions available there are solutions available farmers are there are some farmers who pred organic farming there are practices available uh we should work on scaling up basically onto a largest scale and we our starting point was not organic f to be honest my starting point was about income are the large number of farmers who are committing suicide so we need to work on actually sustaining their incomes so what is the best way to sustain the incomes that's where we got into organic farming as one solution not as a main driver thing yeah so when we try to look at it across the country there are farmers who are practicing it there are good examples available but they're not happening on a scale so the question was how how do we do at a scale so we to look at to happen on a scale what are requirements and then how do we address these issues that's where actually we started looking at and then that's the core strength of CSA even today I would say working so right so that's very interesting because that leads me to my next question which is that uh like if you see uh very broadly many challenges are there but broadly one is how do you grow org mechanically or in a sustainable way climate friendly way secondly is how do you sell right these two are the at the most basic level the two biggest problems how do you grow how do you sell right so now the question is like which is which do you think is a bigger problem I mean do you for example do you say no the growing part is well known there are established practices it's fine it's a lot of it is about the selling or is it the other way or do you say no you take a politically correct answer and say no both are equally important what would you take beyond that say production is an issue see we have not understood the production problems clearly see what happens is okay uh if you have to sell any product the product should be of good quality and produced at an efficient price isn't it that's what anybody doesn't I make a bad product and then if I expect to sell in the market it's not going to work just Market is not going to help anyway if your product is not good isn't it uh then you need to invest a lot on marketing itself so otherwise it won't work that's the basic premise of business today in agriculture the problem is your product is not efficient in terms of quality in terms of pricing so we need to come up with a solution there and that is not working out for two reasons one proper Technical Solutions what works for farmers in a particular situation are not there mhm are not available to the people at least say both ways so people should be equipped to do what they're supposed to do if there is a problem they also should uh understand uh what cropping patterns works for them what kind of uh practices works for them that's one problem at the farmers level and which which means it requires proper extension services to the farmers right second is there's a distortion already caused by the public investment there's a public Distortion cost so your choices are not based on what what you can grow or the practices you can which are good but it is based on the subsidies given over there say the choice of say today if you look at across the country 50% of the cropped area is under rice not even 20% of the cred area is suitable for the kind of rice production we are doing but why are we doing it we doing it because there's a procurement there's a procurement rice is procured you don't have other crops other crops government doesn't procure so procurement dist starts right and if you're a farmer in Punjab your procurement is say 98% if you're a farmer in say West Bengal your procurement is only 10% so government procures only 10% of the production so obviously you don't have market for Rice uh in West Bengal so you have to sell at a cheaper price but if you in Punjab then everything is procured at a guaranteed price by the government so obviously you have a better support there similarly if you look at chemical fertilizers per like I mentioned earlier for every C for every quintal of chemical fertilizer you're using it is about 47,000 nearly about 47,000 rupes per ton is about 4,700 per Quint is a subsidy available and if you're making organic manure and then if you have to use it it's your pocket money you to put from your pocket you have to put money so you make you creating a distortion over there and say if I'm using any amount of water it is free but if I'm saving water there is no incentive for me right government wants Farmers to grow pulses but government buys only rice government says I want to promote millets is an international year of millets but millets are not procured millets are not supported so your intentions when they don't match with the support systems wrong choices are always done right and uh right right that's one problem at the production level so you see India where is the assessment done in terms of what should be India's cropping pattern and that should be based on your need and requirement you know I'll tell you an interesting episode happened in the last five six 10 years I could say uh Telangana government Telangana Agriculture University made an interesting study what is the food total food consumed in telengana and where does it come from so they made an analysis what are the Foods consumed what is the food locally grown what is coming from outside so they came with a plan what should be the cropping pattern so that we can we can grow locally and create Market locally this was a study done they also what are the nutrients available in the soils what are def efficient So based on that what should be the uh whole practices what Farmers should follow these are the two things very interesting things Agriculture University has done uh among many bad things they do but this is something good they did actually and Telangana government decided we will come up with a regulated cropping patterns so that we will tell Farmers what to grow and we thought since the study came up well we thought the decision also will be good government decided we will only grow rice and cotton not any other crop and they made it mandatory and they said put a restriction on selling any other seed they put a restriction on selling any other seed they said only rice and cotton Tana will become rice and cotton Bel and the area increased by 450% rice area and I'm talking between 2017 and 2023 and today we are the largest producer of rice in the country should be proud of or should be assumed if you look at one of the things that you talk about in one of your talks where you mention I think that there are 30 million cars in India and I think the the sort of that's exactly the story you know pollution that is created by cars and almost all the that's the pollution which is caused by so 10 tons of carbon emissions equivalent carbon emissions are from rice and then you are having so much area under rice why are you doing it and then you have so much R which is more than what you can and then so you depend on other state so now we go and pressurize Center to buy and you import all pulses you we were also Mak in calculation you know uh every kg of every acre of pulses production fixes nearly 60 kg nitrogen in the soil which means if you're not growing pulses for every for every kg acre of pulse area coming down you need to increase nearly about five bags of UA use so you are also importing Ura right you are also importing pulses if you stoping pulses and then they do the same money to Farmers to grow pulses you can increase the price by, rupees 1,000 rupees per quintal you can increase because you are saving on the fertilizer subsidy why are we not doing that right so I'm saying see all this shows that deficiency illiteracy is at the higher level people who has to take decis they don't understand the problem they don't understand the problem so they take a wrong choice and that is thrusted onto the people the implications are on the farmers this whole decision on moving increasing the area under rise significantly changed the Topography of the state and now the the entire Big Dam is built world's biggest dam is built in Telangana and that collapsed who is responsible govern Bor of cres and who will repay that and they built a lift irrigation Dam and no fool in this world will build a lift irrigation Dam of that size they built it and now we have to pay to pump out water and where do you pump out water and no one thought about all this right we are we are looking at a very shortterm solution and solutions which gives us immediate uh benefit to some people in the system and when we make a wrong choices none of us are accountable I think that is a challenge absolutely so let's now just uh zoom in a little bit right and let's talk about you have transitioned so many farmers into from very high input chemical farming to gradually into doing regenerative sustainable farming so obviously one of the first questions that the farmer would probably come and ask you is that uh okay I'm going to do this but my yield is going to drop right so I think so first is can you tell us does yield drop when you are doing this transition and if so then how do you how did you convince those Farmers see yield is a myth yield is a myth I would say uh yield is a myth because national average yield versus Farmers yields there will be about 30 40% Gap State average yield versus Farmers Yi research Farm to Farmers field so any of these things there is a gap so yield is always a variant and yield is a function of your soil Health okay like I mentioned Factor productivity has gone down significantly with the chemical fertilizer so if every kg of chemical fertilizer was giving 13.4 kg in 1970 today it is giving 3 and half kg do we call it as efficient or inefficient is the question isn't it yield we need to compare with the factors it how much we are inputting in so we need to look at the net incomes of the people net incomes so what is my total cost m what is my risk what is my net income that's what one need to calculate from that point sh towards organic farming will certainly help certainly help farmers and when I say organic farming I'm talking about a very scientific approach towards shift uh it's not about saying if somebody says apply jam and then one cow can feed 30 acres of land I'm not talking about that and I'm not even talking about if somebody says app 10 tons of vermic compost all your problems will be solved no I'm not also talking about I'm saying shift towards a practice which suits you so today if you're using x amount of inputs and you're growing by a y crop look at what your soil has and then based on it what is your transition plan so make a plan for 3 years and in the three years period how much you can shift inevitably you need to reduce your chemicals use your water and you need to increase your density of crop focus on that so make it your own transition plan so my effort always has been in dialoguing with the farmers around these things so say in my last 20 years of Journey I might personally spoken to more than a lck farmers personally I'm saying one to one on one in small groups personally I'm talking about and none of them had any question I would say see what they say is we tried what we are saying he tried but it didn't work or these are the gaps we found which they are trying to understand so the moment you answer that they're ready to experiment with see one of the days uh there was a workshop organized in Delhi talking about the ganga kinare how to make it organic so there were farmers from Punjab so I was explaining about the pesticide problem in Punjab so there was a farmer from Punjab he said he got up said sir you are only a scientist and you're teaching and you're understanding the problem and you're explaining me but I'm the one who is carrying the pesticide Duba on my back and then I'm spraying do you think you understand the problem more than me I know the problem but what is how do I get out of it I don't want do you think I'm I feel luxury about carrying this one no I don't want but what do I do who tells me how to manage my problem that's the issue issue is about we don't have enough people in this country good field level extension team who can actually talk to the farmers engage them and tell them what is your problem how to understand the problem how Solutions work we have only preachers I would say if you go to any religious preaching event the way the preacher talks about that's how organic farming trainings are done in this country somebody comes and natural farming trainings are done right they will say since I'm saying this is right somebody says cow can make wonders it can make gold it will have in its body you can find gold and then they will say everything and somebody will say my biofertilizer will solve all this problem and some scientist will come and say my Nano UA will work see it's become like question them see the basic question is if I to if my plant requires these nutrients where do they come from somebody has to answer it right how do I aument my nutrient and then how does it come from and then how does it work if that kind of scientific temper is not built into farming it's not going to solve so basically what happens is we change religious we are changing the uh the preachers so someday we talk about organic farming someday we talk about biodynamic farming someday we talk about natural farming and since they became religions all of them fight with each other for the stakes it's all become my way or the highway right it's my way or the highway that is the issue so I think informing and making people capable of taking right choices I think that should be the approach uh extension system should take and that is missing and that I say is a I think this this whole thing around this whole thing around lack of extension uh uh folks right who are actually trained educated who are able to help farmers out I'm hearing this from several people right any any organization which is working directly with farmers in a deep way always comes back and says that this is the problem that because these guys end up especially young guys right the economics allow us to hire only young guys to do this and they usually thing that I've heard is after a year they go ahead and join some fertilizer company or something like that right which pays them a lot more the economics of that business might allow that and this shift happens a lot so first is many of these people don't come from Agri universities where enough has been covered around uh sustainable farming techniques and secondly is once they have come in also after that very quickly they leave so is there do you have a solution in mind for something like this because this is a problem that everybody's talking about now no issue is about I would say uh I would slightly put it differently neither the teacher knows nor the student knows in the universities what is the see that is the issue so of them are like you know there's something called as a dialog in the dark you know that there's a something there's a restaurant chain called dialog in the dark it's run by blind yes yes so agriculture universities are like that the teacher knows not student knows they that's the thing and out there actually so both of them doesn't understand what is the problem of the farmers or how to solve the problem that's what is happening fin point is extension failure comes from uh the failure of the research and education system and we never try to reform that we never try to reform that second we never made it accountable if nearly three and half lakh lak Farmers have committed suicide in the last 25 years or so who is accountable for that right if Government of India wants uh uh Farmers income to double and if it didn't double then who is accountable for that right and if Andra Pradesh and Telangana average income of the pharmacy is about a lakh rupees but the ineptness is two and half lakhs in Andra Pradesh and then one and half lakhs in Andra Telangana who is responsible isn't it so there's no accountability so we have a system which is not accountable so farmers are struggling to make a a living out of it and when they're struggling to make a living out of it strengthening them is the job of all these people the government's entire investment on extension is for that and no one feels it's their responsible second the solution can come only from say I would I would say making them accountable and learning from practice I think these two are very critical so two things we tried what we tried is 2004 when we started CSA we called it as a community managed sustainable agriculture the program we call it as a Community managed sustainable agriculture where we pick the practicing Farmers as the resource persons who in turn will go and talk to the farmers and then train them it becomes easy to converse because they use the same language and talk from a experience they they're experts because they already are practicing so they can teach others so that's how this whole system was built second they are paid by the farmers they're paid by the farmers payment by the farmers doesn't mean it is from their pocket government releases money to the farmers group and then Farmers group assess whether the ex person is working or not and then whether the advisers were used based on it it was paid so there's a Community Management introduced practicing Farmers as extension persons was introduced and that was led to the large scale adoption of the non- pesticidal management in Andra Pradesh I would say that entire program which we did and then which was shown on S was that program so these two helped a lot so people are innovating so there are practices available and then if you can take them as a resource persons and then train others since they are practitioners they can teach better once they and then the people who are taking the service assess it and then pay it so I'm also accountable to say what is right and my payment comes only the that farmer gets a yield so that's accountability system which was built so I think large scale system systems like that is something which is very important so the concept of fos is also that the idea of fos is that you buil a Cooperative which can look at the problems of the farmers and solve that but today it is reduced to an extent that f is only a marketing agents isn't it see correct yeah just right see any manufacturer in this country or any any part of the world if you want to make a product first you look at your economics of your product then isn't it how do you make a best product and then you don't look at doing producing maximum you look at Optimum production so that your pricing is uh very efficient right no Factory is run at capacity no no plant is run at this maximum capacity we WR Optimum capacity so that your economics works out so farming instead of focusing on yield they should focus on maximum profit so how much crop my farm can produce so what kind of diversity I can bring in what is my cost of production what is my net rets I'm going at how much interest I can borrow where do I sell so that whether I should value add or I sell raw is that the decisions which Farmers have to take do we have any good mechanism teaching that to the farmers isn't it say everybody says suddenly now fpos have woken up and then now say value add and then that will solve the problem say I'm a tomato farmer I can sell Tomatoes but if the moment I make ketchup then I have to compete not with the Tomato Farmers but I to compete with over there and I cannot compete on price I cannot compete on quality I cannot compete on marketing investment they make so my validation is not my strength my strength is on producing Tomatoes how do I produce Tomatoes efficiently is what I need to focus on isn't it so I'm saying in this whole game of everybody tries to bring in a solution which they think is a solution no one it's only an opinion which is POS done and opinions becomes policies and Investments comes over there and no one looks at whether that is practicable and then the moment uh it fails farmers are illiterate and then small farmers India has large number of small farmers it doesn't work so let's consolidate the landh holding move 30% of the people outside and which is stupid right right you made to rule these people so if you don't have this 30% or 40% small and marginal farmer 80% small and marginal farmers in this country you don't need a public extension system right why do you need a public extension system we don't need you public extens because to serve the small and marginal farmers who can affort cor so I think that's a problem so I think small and marginal Farmers there is also a strength that small and marginal Farmers have right which we should kind of be cognizant of that and and build systems which that strength right so that's the issue so we are trying to say the same if you look at Punjab for example every house has a tractor and then probably every fifth household has a harvester over there and uh they use hardly 5% or 10% of the capacity of the machines rest of the time they are all laying idle over there why do you need such machines you need can be used at least for 200 days in a year right that's how you need look at then your entire Farm machinary policy has to change it's not that we don't need machinary you need maer but not this way so the battles have become ideological other than looking at Solutions on the other hand people who promote arganic farming people who promote organic and natural farming also are becoming very fundamentalistic on the other end they say Farmers knows everything if Farmers knows everything why there's a crisis for there isn't it there's a crisis because I'm saying either of it is not right and saying no to everything is easy but what do you want there's no consensus on what you want there's consensus on what you don't want so everybody says no no this no that kind of thing but not getting back to what we want right right now sir there is one angle which is there which like at fism we kind of believe that this is being ignored by the uh by policy makers and everybody else which is that see certainly when you are trying to do let's say very ground level farmer extension services Etc one of the things is you'll have some farmers who are really skilled and who have worked with you who are seeing success and they will end up inspiring others and also helping others right that's kind of important now uh one way is you from the existing Farmers you kind of go ahead and build that the other thing which we actually believe in but uh uh but nobody else is really interested in you know I mean it seems like a is basically actually people from from corporates getting back into farming you know I know that this is something probably people who have worked in the ground they like are these are all stupid fellows who are thinking of getting back from corporate into farming but we believe uh contrary to the opinion of many others that this is a very important thing that we have to have some people who also get back into farming from the corporate world because they do bring certain level of skills which Indian farmers are lacking so if you have to improve that overall the system right you need to inject that those skills and that fresh Blood also into the system which I think is very important but people are not talking about it people talk about it from the perspective of oh these are rich guys who are you know they just want to play around with farming which is probably true a lot of people who get back from corporate into farming are heavily underestimating the effort that would require or they come from a very utopian mindset so that is I I I agree to that but I think this is one angle of the solution ution which we are perhaps ignoring in general because it does not make a good story right it makes a very good story when a bureaucrat a government bureaucrat is saying oh we are doing this to help these now these 50,000 farmers who are really poor and now their income has become 2x right it does not help anybody when they talk about oh there are these thousand people who have you know who are somebody was a banker somebody was something else they have got back into farming and we feel that they have a very important role to play right because it's it's not cool you know so I don't know what your take on that is huh see no no uh I don't think that that is the issue actually issue is uh the people who came from other sectors the number of people who come in so almost daily I interact with large number of people and all see issue is like I mentioned about agriculture see the collapse of Agriculture is because of the system right as a system it's a systemic problem I would education research and all and same is the case with everyone I would say so I'm saying it's the same across the sectors and when somebody say when somebody switches over a system and then tries to find a solution it depends on how you're dealing with it how you're dealing with it um very initial days we used to engage lot of these people who came from different sectors and still we do in fact last we finished a trading last week where we had 27 people from who moved from it and other Industries to agriculture so we had a 21 days training program for them we Tred to work with them so the issue is when people make a shift and what assumptions you make a shift and then what you do and then how do you communicate what you are doing is an important issue isn't it very important um many comes with an assumption that are not able to do it because they don't know and we know everything and then we I think that is the something which has happened right also also they're misled by some claims being made by others I would say simply by using two three solutions everything will solve kind of thing and I know many people who have burned their or they read or they read some of these some of these clickbait articles on social media right which says you might have seen those farmer leaves his corporate job one CR corporate jobs and makes three and a half crores in his first year growing aloe vera you must have seen all of these headlines right yeah yeah so what we did is we picked up 100 such people uh we picked up actually 100 such stories we went back to them what are you doing after four five years of the story appeared we went back to them and then figured out uh what has happened to them uh because when others are making losses how are they nearly 95% of them are into either trading trading see one the moment I get a recognition I'm a farmer who is selling directly then I start buying from others I stop actually producing because the crisis lies in production it's not economics I don't produce but I buy and then sell so they became mostly Traders and many of them have ended up in losses also I'm not saying they not ended up in I know many people who have sold their land and all so if you look at the Spectrum of these people educated youth coming into Agriculture and they are the ones in the Spectrum the stories we hear is only about the top 1% uh where people say there are uh they made crores of rupees kind of thing and all of them had not made money from production and uh internally our own analysis shows many cases we are not put it out because we don't want to defame anyone or discourage anyone coming into this sector this basically they made money out there's nothing wrong in nothing wrong but you need to say so can make it uh people will understand where the issue lies second many of them made losses I would tell you one more dimension of this problem it's not just the software guys who came into agriculture it's actually call rural youth who studied many of them when they couldn't get any job they also came back to Agriculture and this is happening over a period of time uh if you look at actually the National Crime records Bureau data National Crime records Bureau data where there is the farmer suicides recorded large number of farmers suicides are the young ones between 25 to 35 40 to 40 is the ones who have committed I didn't know that wow H that is the issue so if you're looking at today's data if they're between 25 and 40 means they came into agriculture some 5 10 years back right unfortunately many of them are influenced by magazines TV stories and they take into a kind of Agriculture which is high risk without getting into uh understanding the reality of it and where do you get your reality of understanding say if you want to learn where in this country is a place where you can go and learn no University teachers no school teachers and many of the stories are not honest stories so it's a hype which is created so every time when I speak to many such people they say I face this problem I don't know how to understand the problem people say this will solve the problem not working but how do I do it and it becomes a social compulsion since you took on doing this tomorrow you can't deny what you're doing so you get into a kind of vicious cycle I know same thing is happening with many farmers also so many farmers who are touted as resource persons in this country examples of uh Bri Noble Farmers kind of thing uh they sacrificed a lot they also had losses kind of so in all these the basic story I would basic I would say is that to create an impact to to get attention of the people and to sell an idea sometimes certain things are exagerated which is fine because when you sell any product we also exagerate the benefits of it and also likewise organic farming is also exagerated the problem comes when you start believing in your own lies we start believing in our own lies perpetuate those lies that is the problem I think otherwise I would say more people coming into agriculture is always welcome and agriculture is going to sustain and has to sustain time and it means you also need to get new people into the farming the problem is where are the support systems where they can learn or where they're supported so that they can move on that is an issue now uh one quick question so obviously I think us what has changed in your understanding of the agricultural system the challenges the solutions 20 years back versus now I mean okay are you saying that uh is your understanding of the system is it like okay yeah these were the same problems that we saw 20 years back or is there like it could be because new problems have come up or new Solutions have come up or it could be because your understanding has evolved so is there a difference between ramu of 20 years back and ramu of certainly now certainly certainly certainly there's see we learned a lot in the last 20 years and uh several things changed out around say 20 years back when we first said uh we can grow crops without using pesticides people offed at us and today everybody is talking about it organic is going to become mainstream now certainly whether anybody agrees or not in the next say five years at least we will have about 20% of the area under organic natural farming which is about nearly 10 times from 2% to 20% would be a big jump going to happen wow 20% of uh cultivation in India wow next years cly so in next 5 years certainly if not at 18 but certainly going to become so because we are we can't afford chemicals no more we can't afford no more the water so we are going to make a shift I think that's what is is going to happen and say and the problem is realized today compared to say 20 years there's an acceptance there is a realization but but how smoother this transition would be for the people is the question see what happens is when the transition not smoother it impacts on weaker people in the society so they'll be pushed out of farming right there'll be problems over there and once the market grows it benefits the people who are into Market it doesn't benefit the producers over there so how do we create systems so that the small and Mar who form large number of people will benefit out of this trans is the question we need to look at so I would say the the the whole framework of challenges which India faces today are very different from the challenges we were facing 20 years back same way the opportunities also changed significantly compulsions have changed significantly I think these three makes it very condusive today for making a transition so the now the challenge is how do we make this transition fruitful to small and marginal Farmers I think that's the key question in front of us and how do we make it easy for to make a transition rather than trusting on the people so Ru let's say if you had uh like a billion dollars available with you now right and uh you have been passionate about uh trying to fix the agricultural system in India where would you invest that billion dollars how would you how would you allocate that money like and let's assume that your motive is social Roi not not profit Roi yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so I would say two important things which are creating the problem there's no proper infrastructure facilities in this country for agriculture whether we talk about water availability whether it is talking about uh uh managing the soils um whether we talk about post Harvest management there no enough of infrastructure built in this country suitable infrastructure appropriate infrastructure built in this country wrong choices wrong decisions money is invested but not done properly I would say so if I if there's money I would try to look at uh creating infrastructure facilities I would say research education system Market systems infrastructure facilities that's what I would create exactly two years back this is a question somebody asked me um exactly two years back exactly the same question somebody asked me the place I'm sitting today okay so so uh a doctor couple came to me and then said uh you're doing would work but uh if you want to take this forward what are your priorities I said we learned a lot but uh there's a lack of people who are capable of doing at the ground level they said so they took me to a farm and then said this what can be done here and I said what can be done so basically how do we change the farming and then what can be done over there and they said uh if you are the voter of the farm what do you do I said I I would set up education center where people can come and learn said let's do it and then we did this krishnaa Academy is the result of that uh I would not have afforded to make it interesting I would say so it happened so things happen I would say the plans are about creating such infrastructure facilities where people can come learn say here we are not having we are in Krishna District we are not having yelds which are comparable with any chemical farmer around here we are not still we are in the process of improvising but anybody who sees the will get a confidence that is possible to make a change it is possible today there's a say maybe two three quter less yield coming in but in the next two three years it will improve seeing the farm gives a confidence seeing the facilities creates a and then the dialogue with the others here will give a confidence I would say such infrastructure facilities I would say I would say similarly about the irrigation in India so I would say just I would say go ahead please irrigation life saving irrigation for crops I would say if we can give two or three irrigations facility you don't need to irrigate create a facility if there is a rainfall shortage by more than 15 days you can give an irrigation potentially no crop is lost in this country no crop is lost in this country then your Investments goes up if Farmers knows that my investment is not going to waste I'm going to get minimum returns people will invest to the problem is that % of the land in this country is completely rainfed you don't have any facilities there I would say create those things so one thing we are now attempting is to create a landscape level models I would say landscape level models we are choosing few districts few blocks where we want to try on a scale so across the country 10 15 such landscape models we are trying out say chtis Dada entire district is we are nearly at 50% of The Villages becoming 100% and rest of the 50% nearly around 60 70% transitions happen so pretty soon we are going to have an entire district and next month we are discussing in utar Canada District of Karnataka similar kind of thing so such plans are emerging and there are people who are ready to invest from the government side and then philanthropy side and then the market side so there Investments coming in so the idea is there's no knowledge base around that so somebody has to experiment and at a landscape level how transitions are and create that support systems I would say that's what I would do if there's money around a billion and create create some of these playbooks which can then be replicated in many different places as well right creating that playbook in India I would say there are three different situations three different situations one situation is very low input low output and low Environmental impact kind of areas I'm talking about sikim arunachal Pradesh meala those kind of tribal pockets of some of the districts jarh tribal belt jar tribal belt they all four so there the issue is about how do we increase their economic status focus on that improve the intensity of production and then so input how do we create opportunity for them to produce more and then earn more I think that's the focus one need to make there other end where there's a high input use high returns High environmental impact Punjab harana Krishna District uh I would say CI District other districts across the country there there's no incentive for the farmers to make a transition environment is damaging that's okay but they're getting good income they're good getting good things so there your interventions are very very different you need to make there's a third area which is nearly 50 60% of the cropped area in the country where your input use is high incomes are low because of inefficient production system but the environmental impact is very high and that's a large part of the country where you use more water but you get low y you use more fertilizer you get low yield they're increasing the efficiency of the system is what we need to look at so I would say these three different situations require different interventions different knowledge bases and I would suddenly create this uh these things across the country so that all of us can move in a similar kind of uh I would say we we may start at different uh levels but somewhere when we reach we all should move in the same PA yeah that's what I would say right right right awesome so I think my final question to you my final question to you so like I have noticed that recently uh like you have started talking a lot about the climate angle of it as you mentioned that when you start the journey the focus was on Farmer income right and then you started you started talking a lot about uh natural resour poison on the plate and things like that right what it's causing to right and then then and and now I see you yeah and now I see you talk a lot about the climate angle because I think see all of all of Humanity's problems right finally climate problem is something which affects every single one of us right I mean there is no escaping it right I mean I could say that far are facing all this problem te I'm aware of it I feel sad about it but I'm going to get out of farming and not do farming right but climate There's No Escape right and related to that there's this whole other problem around climate being a very Global issue it's not just about India it's something which is affecting everybody all across the world now just if you look at from one perspective that all of these things that you are doing in India these different models that you are trying out some of it is succeeding some of it you are tweaking Etc um I have one question which is that if you look at like uh the lack of resources that get spent in the right way in Indian farming in in the US also uh large Farmers Farmers with 400 Acres average Farm holding size Etc but even there if you see that farming is still one of the most suicide prone professions right so so there is something something very structurally wrong it's not just about availability of resources or or the policy makers here versus the policy makers somewhere else I mean in some sense is it because that the whole system across the world is designed to you know basically uh let urbanites uh have a good life uh by exploiting The Producers is that what it is I mean why is farming broken across the world it's not just an Indian specific thing H so so there are two different dimensions of the problem we need to understand one is about um one is about uh our wrong understanding of the issues basically see the whole if you look at India or globally the assumption is that make food cheaper so that every other sector will grow because the moment you make food expensive people can't affort so your salaries have to go up and then investment has to go up so I remember C sub who was the first agriculture minister of this country when he wrote this entire policy of public distribution system so when the procurement happened and then the food subsidies were introduced he said food subsidies are not for Farmers food subsidies are for consumers and for industrial growth if the wages have to be low food should be available cheaper so food should be subsidized if if a food prices goes up wages will go up if wages goes up industry cannot effort so industry cannot grow so that's the Assumption in which actually the whole subsidy system started and globally that is the issue today if you look at uh us agriculture or any of the global agriculture system everything's price on subsidies because if the food prices goes up it will have a cascading impact on every other sector so they want to keep the food prices lower but what all other countries other than India has done is to keep food prices lower whoever is getting affected out of it are compensated they're compensated so the whole agriculture policies are around how to compensate for the losses people make because of the interventions by the government but in India that was never done Farmers income is affected because of the intervention then that should be compensated by the government which is not done and we expect them to become very economically viable because but they won't become economically viable because you are not supporting properly there's no Equitable support take out all the subsidies farming is the most viable thing in this world because if I'm putting say 25 kg of grain and if it is if it is qus of grain what is more productive than that isn't it in a farm you're putting 25 kg of grain 25 qus in six months what is more productive than that isn't it technically that is what is more productive issue is about your support systems are the failure and artificially you are trying to regulate the prices Etc so you creating a platform which is not competitive at all so that is the issue so lot more policies have to change that's one thing second part the question you asked globally why farmers are exploited farmers are in losses see always there is somebody at the bottom of the pyramid in India it may be one acre farmer or a landless farmer in US it may be th Acres Farm but always you are at the bottom of the pyramid in a land where on average land holding is 10,000,000 Acres farmer is always at the bottom of the pyramid and always if there's a 50 is a minor thought somewhere so the economy always neglect somebody at the bottom of the pyramid that's an issue you may be a big farmer compared to India but you are a small farmer over there you're are negligent so that is the issue so we always neglect right people at the bottom of the pyramid their interest their needs their and that's distorted choices right today say beat farmer in us will get more support than vegetable farmer so who will grow vegetables that's an issue chemical Farm more support than so the reason yeah so the reason I asked that question was because the final final question is that uh if climate change is something which everybody in the world is worried about and if uh climate change is a very is a problem of incentives and coordination across countries now right not just very localized so where does how does the Indian farmer fit into that the Indian small holder regenerative SL organic farmer fit into that ecosystem uh from a global climate change perspective uh in terms of are there can can can an Indian farmer now make money from somebody else sitting in US Who We Are subsidizing by doing you know uh Good Farming and carbon credits Etc does that work in real life there is a lot of talk about that but uh is there a mechanism through which Indian Farmers could get rewarded for doing the right things if he push them to do it and would it be any meaningful addition to their income oh see we are not yet ready to that is what I feel systems are not ready systems are not yet ready to actually move into that kind of economic model see but where does Indian farming would say where does India has a better stake I would say if you look at from that point Point uh Indian small and marginal farmers can shift towards organic and natural farming more quickly than anybody else in the world I would say Indian farmers can shift towards organic farming more quickly more easily compared to anybody else in the world because of two reasons one they're small already they're in crisis so anything they make is only a benefit for not going to lose anything already they in crisis moving better system I think that's a and then small farmers easy to make because they also have a family labor to do it that would be one thing which is Advantage for the country second India is so diverse that around the year you can produce food I don't think any part of the world can do that around the year 365 days you can grow country where nobody else can do it so you can be a good producer and Supply food wherever whoever wants it and you can actually make money out of it compared to anything else provided proper support systems are available proper regulation system are available you put in restrictions on chemicals allow Farmers to make transitions say let's India has a plan in terms of say reducing fertilizer use by 50% in the next 5 years focus on that reduce in areas where there's a very high use so when you're talking about organic farming focus in areas where there is high use not going into the default areas where nobody is using and that is organic transitioning right support people who are actually uh using high so that make a shift so that it benefits Farmers also I think that's one strategy we need to look at second establish trust where is the trust in this country that this product is good and this this is done this in a particular way so there's no trust on the system at all anywhere so neither the certification agencies not the Traders not the farmers not the scientific institutions not noos then how do we fix this broken system get them together I think that's where it works see carbon financing is to some extent is beneficial but so the way it is designed today is not in agriculture is not much I would say uh mitigation may be a good mitigation has a better potential I would say uh then sequestration I would say if I had to break it up uh where does this Finance come mitigation for example if I'm reducing chemical use in agriculture say rice for example has around 10 tons acre emissions and if the 10 tons can be brought down to 34 tons which is nearly 50 60% reduction so 50 60% reduction means about four five credits four five tons reduction four five credits it turns to and then that can but today's price in the market is only say $10 per credit so 45 credits is about 4 five $40 and in the $40 if you look at say 50% goes to the farmer rest goes for data management uh and other systems Etc finally farmer will get around 1200 1300 kind of thing uh Which is less than a subsidy on a bag of UA right so I would say create more the farmers to make right then these monies can come in in terms of facilitating the whole process see what happens is it's like the organic markets the whole system of establishing that you are doing organic more expensive than the organic product right that is the reality of it I would say if I'm selling product as organic in the market the systems you establish to show that you are organic and the trust certification packing processing and then the consumer education this would be more expensive than the product itself means the farm will get only 20% 80% is spent in the rest of the supply chain so same will happen with the climate change also because of the see we small farmers small farmers so obviously aggregating is expensive instead if you focus on say landscape level transitions Villages districts and then focus on that say if a district reduces the fertilizer used by say 50% compensate for that so the new schemes like government of India is talking about PM pram Etc will be more more uh beneficial to the farmers if they're put into right use and then if right Data Systems can be generated than actually carbon credits I would say say fertilizer use say pmam no I'm saying if PM pram is saying 50% of please go ahead please go ahead no PM pram says fertilizer use if the if any state reduces fertilizer use by 50% fertilizer use I'll compensate 50% of the subsidy directly to the state uh which is a good thing say my calculation of Andra Pradesh is say we use nearly about 16 lakh tons of fertilizer every year and if 16 lakh tons can be brought down to 15 lakhs which is about a lakh tons if you can cut down we save nearly about 100 crores and the entire money invested on organic farming programs in Andra Pradesh would be just four five crores kind of so obviously that money can be used for more people to make the transitions kind of thing so quite possible and that from 16 lakhs to 15 lakh bringing down is quite easy not very difficult so there should be comprehensive approach in terms of how do we set Targets in terms of transitions kind of thing uh so quite possible and then these monies can be used I would say in the process if you're generating credits you can add to that and then so overall help may happen see like I mentioned earlier world is going to move towards organic farming in India Food business organic food business is growing by 37% per year compound growth rate 37% no other industry is growing at that rapid base we are going to double our organic production in the next so all these are in front of us it is happening without government support if the government support comes in in a right way probably further accelerate if it comes in a wrong way it may da accelerate also so it depends on how policies are changed do you think the government should also support so there are two angles to this right one is all of the support required for transitioning farmers in providing them Market access Etc but perhaps there is also some government support required in terms of just sheer consumer education because consumer you cannot leave consumers out of this equation right no I think government should probably put in a lot of effort on that as well yes so I would say entire food system is all about consumption not the production right if a farmers consumers make right choice production will change so there's no enough Investments made on the consumer side all about right choices like I mentioned right in the beginning I work with Farmers I talk about how farmers can make right choices but uh unless consumers make right choices uh the farmers will not make right choices I'll just give you a small example we were making a calculations about Hyderabad see in Hyderabad if everybody eats rice what is the amount of water we are consuming as a water footprint this will be nearly seven times the the kind of kesum Dam built we don't want kesum Dam to be built but all of us want to eat rice it's not going to work right so I also need to make a choice these are all interdependent so we all feel we need organic food but I don't buy it I I don't want Farmers to use pesticides and we feel far in the p in their own form so what does it happen around Hyderabad whatever pesticides are used comes into the S the him sag over there which is the drinking water supplier to the Hyderabad so entire things comes here so it's we are all interconnected so consumers making right choices is something very critical so lot of have to go there so like I mentioned National Institute of nutrition comes up with annual reports it comes up with what India should eat what is so there are reports available which like I mentioned the data which I mentioned saying there's a 30% 40% the nutrients is for the consumers that's the data which n has put out but who is reading it who is reading it who of it whose responsibility is it basically is is a question so in that absence of that right who's responsible who's accountable right who accountable the same story see I would say it's everywhere that is the same story who is accountable who is accountable so I think in India these systems have to be fixed yeah that's what I would say awesome awesome thank so great I think uh we I really enjoyed the conversation I hope you had a good time as well and uh thank you so much and for listeners who are tuning in uh yeah for listeners who are tuning in please like share subscribe Etc right and uh thank you again so much and uh hope to meet you in person soon okay take care bye-bye thank you everyone hope you enjoyed the farmon show where we uncover the delicious interplay between food farming and wellness shaping a brighter healthier better for Farmers better for the planet better for you [Music]