Subrata Singh* & Shubo Biswas**
The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India considers diminishing soil structure and biology as one of the leading causes of stagnation in agricultural productivity. Soil is one of the most important ‘infrastructure’ of the farmers, based on which the entire agriculture is dependent and therefore the farmers’ livelihoods. According to Ashok Dalwai, CEO of National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA), the Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) content in India has come down to 0.3 percent from 1 percent in the past 70 years which is a cause of concern for the agriculture sector.
The Agriculture Ministry under the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) initiated with the objectives to make agriculture more productive, sustainable and climate resilient; to conserve natural resources; to adopt comprehensive soil health management practices; to optimise utilisation of water resources; etc. Soil Health Management (SHM) is one of the most important interventions under NMSA and the government launched the Soil Health Card portal in 2015. The portal has over 10 crore records and provides district and block wise understanding of the soil health information on various parameters.
While the portal is an excellent repository of information and the individual soil health card provides the details of the soil health of their plot of land to the farmer with recommendation for fertiliser usage, we felt the need for making sense of data at a spatial scale and understanding the reasons. FES and GreenGood Labs, LLC. have been working together to improve our understanding and support decision making for agricultural interventions involving farmers, extension workers and the government. A geospatial analytical tool called Soil Health Explorer has been developed by GreenGood Labs, LLC. to analyse the information from 80,000+ soil health cards spread over 8 districts in Odisha from the portal.
Emerging challenges of climate change and growing population imply that the current agricultural systems will need to produce more food in an increasingly vulnerable environment (owing to climate change) as well as a declining natural resource base. It is scientifically proven that soil organic carbon plays a pivotal role in maintaining soil physical, chemical, and biological properties and ultimately yield and therefore may be considered as a central measure of the agricultural system capacity of a location. Soil carbon is the most important component in the soil that determines ecosystem and agroecosystem functions by influencing soil fertility, soil water, environment, microbial activity and other soil parameters.
Further, with regenerative agriculture as a core focus of our engagement, we have attempted to garner our understanding focusing on soil organic carbon as the single most important indicator. While we understand that the state of the soil health of a plot is a function of the agronomic practices, crops grown, rotation followed and inputs provided, understanding the trends through larger datasets provide a better understanding at spatial scales for decision making.
For the matter of understanding, we mapped the soil organic carbon data of 80000+ data sets based on the Government of India set criteria of high (>0.75%), medium (0.51 - 0.75%) and low (<0.50%) as green, yellow and red colours to represent the data spatially
Laying down the data spatially was a revelation -
In locations with good forests/commons (like in Angul), farms nearer to the commons have more organic carbon than the farms away from the commons. In locations like in Koraput, where the forests/commons are degraded, the soil organic carbon in such areas is poor. This clearly indicates the nutrient (organic matter) flows from the good forests/commons to the farm lands. This urges one to look at agriculture as part of the larger landscape and the health of the landscape and the land-use therein determines the health of the agriculture system.
Attempts are being made to understand the data spatially based on the period of ground cover on the agriculture lands during the year. Most of the areas in this part of the country are left fallow after Kharif or farmers take a short-term crop in winter to use the available soil moisture. The farms are usually fallow during the summer months which is largely responsible for depletion in soil organic carbon. Analysis suggests that the plots mostly have low soil carbon content in areas where the barrenness is for a longer period. According to Rattan Lal, Director of Ohio State University’s Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, the world’s cultivated soils have lost between 50 and 70 percent of their original carbon stock, much of which has oxidized upon exposure to air to become carbon dioxide.
The tool would help the frontline agriculture workers - Block Agriculture Officers (BAO), Assistant Agriculture Officers (AAO), Krushak Sathis and Krishi Mitras to understand the issues in their areas, evolve and design interventions to improve soil organic carbon in their locations. The key directions could be:
Understand the farming system as a whole, with various components of the landscape contributing to the outcomes in a farm. For example, the commons play an important role in improving soil moisture regimes, nutrient cycling, pollination services etc.
Efforts need to be made to reduce the direct exposure of the soils to the atmosphere as longer term exposure would lead to oxidation of carbon into carbon dioxide.
Improve the soil organic carbon across the area through increasing the biomass and organic matter in the soil and help in improving microbial activities in the soil. Proper management of organic manures and crop residues, conservation tillage, mulching, and cover crops can play an important role in reducing carbon dioxide emission.
Crop rotation, green manuring (berseem, alfalfa), legume crops, animal manures, biofertilizers, adoption of agroforestry systems, silvopastoral systems, etc. can help improve organic carbon content in soil.
Regular engagement and deliberations among stakeholders using the datasets and the analysis can help evolving long term strategies in the meetings of the Block Technical Team (BTT) and District Level Guidance Committees. There is an urgent need to appreciate and recognize Soil Organic Carbon as the key asset and we need to work together to restore the same.
* Subrata Singh is the Programme Director at Foundation for Ecological Security and has more than two decades of experience working on issues related to land and water commons, natural resource management, community governance, polycentric governance, and public policy.
** Shubo Biswas is the Founder and CEO of GreenGood Labs, LLC. which works with a vision to co-create solutions with the help of local communities and make them available to the maximum number of people through open designs and free access to education material.