Reducing pesticides to improve Indian crop productivity

A study from 946 arable farms in France shows that reduced use of pesticides can still improve crop productivity and assure profitability, provided the farming practices are modified. Adopting cropping systems with reduced pesticide use would not impact productivity in 94% of farms, and could even be associated with enhanced productivity in 39% of farms.

The climate in France is temperate as in northwestern India, and the study covers a large range of soils, including soils with low available water capacity. Reducing the use of pesticides by 40-60% in France improved the crop productivity in 39% of the farms, which have temperate climate, and soils with low available water capacity like those in northwestern India, making the study particularly relevant for India.

The productivity of crops like farms growing maize, straw cereals, oilseed rape, and sunflower with low amounts of pesticides was potentially improved when the pesticide burden was reduced as compared with farms more reliant on pesticides. “Pesticide use could be reduced without a significant impact on profitability in 67% of the surveyed farms. In 11% of the farms, pesticide use reduction could even significantly increase profitability”, say scientists at the Agrosolutions and National Institute for Agricultural Research, France in their recent study published in the journal Nature Plants.

This strategy failed in those 6% farms where the soils were loamy with high available water capacity, which is ideal for growing crops like potato and sugar beet. Indeed, those crops are both highly profitable for farmers, and strongly reliant on pesticides, so in France where these crops are grown, the most profitable farms are also those farms that use the highest levels of pesticides. For most 55% of the farms, reducing pesticides did not reduce crop productivity, did not affect it significantly, indicating that using pesticide in most of these farms was redundant.

Using pesticides in agriculture poses environmental and health hazards. Since a long time, researchers have argued whether agriculture with lesser pesticides can be as productive and profitable as current agricultural practices. “Low pesticide use is rarely associated with decreased productivity and profitability in arable farms, provided that several alternative non-chemical measures to control pests and weeds are also adopted”, claim scientists in their report.

The Ministry of Agriculture is a nodal ministry that deals with pesticides, encourages the proper use of pesticides and develops alternatives to pesticides to promote sustainable agriculture in India. A drastic reduction in pesticides use may seem to deeply impact the market organization and trade balance in the agricultural sector. This recent study in France invigorates the need to carry out a rigorous analysis of the proposal to reduce pesticides for agriculture in the Indian setting, which might be a key to pesticide-free future.

Reference: Nature Plants 3: 17008.