Sikkim is the first ‘Organic State’ in India. What are the ecological and economical benefits of Organic State?. (UPSC IAS Mains 2018 General Studies Paper – 3)
Sikkim became India’s first ‘organic state’ by implementing organic practices - free of chemical pesticides and chemical fertilisers.
Ecological Benefits of Organic State
- Organic practices such as crop rotations, inter-cropping, symbiotic associations encourage soil fauna and flora, improving soil formation and structure and creating more stable systems.
- This increases retentive abilities of the soil for nutrients and water. This also plays an important role in soil erosion control.
- Pollution of groundwater due to synthetic fertilizers and pesticides is curtailed.
- Organic practices like minimum tillage, returning crop residues to the soil, and the greater integration of nitrogen-fixing legumes contributes to mitigating the greenhouse effect and global warming through its ability to sequester carbon in the soil.
- Reduce the risks of human, animal, and environmental exposure to toxic materials
- Fine-tunes farming practices to meet local production conditions.
Economical Benefits
- Less dependency on terminator seeds will decrease the input cost of farmers.
- Less consumption of fertilizers by farmers will lower the fertilizer subsidy burden on government.
- The high demand for organic products and their higher sale prices will lead to higher farmer income.
- It acts as a boon to tourist industry, with a growing market for eco-tours and farm vacations.
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