Under this sub theme, agriculture is a very important area and i have chosen to work on it as agriculture taking place in a unsustainable way has numerous impacts on the environment. Heavy rain and irrigation leads to agrochemical runoff contaminating waterways,heavy metals and toxic materials go into water bodies;leading to eutrophication , a build-up of chemicals in the soil can impact plants,which in turn can be transferred to wildlife and humans who eat the plants and also a quarter of world's farmland is affected by serious degradation, up from 15% two decades ago, the Indian farmers have also increased there fertilizer usage by 33%, conventional agriculture also has a negative effect on 20% mammals and 5% birds, all these have been boosted by subsidy given by the government on fertilizer and high yielding variety(HYV) seeds.
In concern with these problems many NGOs have come up to lead agriculture in a sustainable manner."Navdanya" being one of the NGOs have been working on organic agriculture and also offer to compensate the if the yield is lower than expected, due to transition from conventional farming to organic farming. They also approached farmers to conserve their own seeds and make own pesticides. Navdanya now has trained more than 250,000 farmers, students, government officials and staff of national and international NGOs on biodiversity conservation and organic farming.
In my opinion farmers should practice sustainable methods like organic farming and multicropping, they should use locally available manures like cow dung and cow urine, and homemade sustainable pesticides, the government should ensure cheap loan facilities for poor farmers so that the ycan bare the short term loss of shift from conventional to organic farming instead of giving subsidy on fertilizers.