Agro Ecology and it's Principle - 2 | Agriculture Optional Notes for UPSC PDF Download

Consolidated Set of 13 Agroecological Principles

1. Resource Cycling: Prioritize the use of local, renewable resources and aim to maintain resource cycles for nutrients and biomass as close as possible.
2. Input Reduction: Reduce or eliminate reliance on purchased inputs.
3. Soil Health: Focus on securing and improving soil health and functionality to enhance plant growth, with a particular emphasis on managing organic matter and enhancing soil biological activity.
4. Animal Welfare: Ensure the health and well-being of animals in agricultural practices.
5. Biodiversity Conservation: Maintain and enhance species diversity, functional diversity, and genetic resources, both within the agroecosystem and across different spatial and temporal scales, including fields, farms, and landscapes.
6. Ecological Synergy: Promote positive ecological interactions, synergies, integrations, and complementarities among the various elements of agroecosystems, including plants, animals, trees, soil, and water.
7. Economic Diversification: Increase on-farm income diversity to provide greater financial independence and value addition opportunities for small-scale farmers, allowing them to respond to consumer demands.
8. Co-creation of Knowledge: Foster the co-creation and horizontal sharing of knowledge, including local and scientific innovations, particularly through farmer-to-farmer exchange.
   
9. Social Values and Diets: Develop food systems rooted in the culture, identity, tradition, and social and gender equity of local communities, offering healthy, diverse, seasonally appropriate, and culturally relevant diets.
10. Fairness: Promote dignified livelihoods for all participants in food systems, especially small-scale food producers, based on principles of fair trade, fair employment, and equitable treatment of intellectual property rights.
11. Connectivity: Establish trust and proximity between producers and consumers by encouraging fair and short distribution networks and by reintegrating food systems into local economies.
12. Land and Natural Resource Governance: Recognize and support family farmers, smallholders, and peasant food producers as sustainable stewards and managers of natural and genetic resources.
13. Participation: Encourage social organization and increased participation in decision-making by food producers and consumers to support decentralized governance and local adaptive management of agricultural and food systems.

Issues

• In India, the agricultural sector is significantly influenced by influential groups with vested interests and strong connections to well-funded sectors, including fossil fuel, fertilizer, and seed companies. Additionally, there are scientists with financial ties to agribusiness entities.
• These interest groups perceive the widespread adoption of agroecology as a substantial challenge to their dominance over farming systems. Consequently, these powerful elites are actively campaigning against natural farming, which, at present, remains a minor player in the agricultural landscape.
• As an example, the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences recently sent a letter to the Prime Minister, expressing opposition to Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF). This opposition was formed following a brainstorming session that included representatives from various industries.