Organic farming is crop and livestock production practices that avoid the use of synthetic pesticides, chemical fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, synthetic antibiotics, synthetic growth hormones, synthetic animal drugs and synthetic food additives. Organic agriculture completely restricts on use of chemical fertilizer and utilizes locally available resources like, cow dung manure, compost manure, vermi-compost and thus, reduce the dependency on other countries for chemical inputs.
HOW ORGANIC AGRICULTURE HELPS IN CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION??
As, organic agriculture excludes the synthetic fertilizers, pesticides etc. it plays an imperative role in mitigation of climate change. Studies show that, water retention capacity in organically managed soil is 100% higher in compare to conventional soils. So that, from this also we can understand that, organic farming systems are more resilient to changing weather conditions, such as extreme droughts and extreme rainfall.
Not only this, as compared to conventional farms, organic farm has thirty percent more bio-diversity. More biodiversity that means there will be dense plants and densely populated wildlife. Thus, these plants certainly help in carbon sequestration.
Organic agriculture reduces energy consumption by 30-70% per unit of land by excluding the energy required to synthesize chemical fertilizer.
Organic agriculture promotes the use of renewable resources like, solar energy, geo-thermal energy, bio-gas energy and minimizes the use of non-renewable resources like, fossil fuel i.e. it only uses around 30-50% fewer fossil fuels to yield same quantity of product as in conventional system. Renewable resources can be replenished easily and on the other hand, non-renewable resource like, fossil fuel takes millions of year to be replenished. Not just this, fossil fuel has hazardous impact on this planet also. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has revealed that fossil fuel emits about 89% of CO2 and this is surely the cause of pollution, global warming, biodiversity loss and food scarcity. As, main causes of climate change and global warming are burning of fossil fuel, deforestation and excessive use of synthetic fertilizers and organic agriculture cut out these. So, considering future also, organic agriculture has several other benefits.
Cover crops, mulching of crops, mixed cropping, inter cropping, crop residues, bio control like pyrethrin and natural predators are integrated into organic farming. Cover crops like clover, oats, cereal rye, oil-seed radishes helps in reducing soil compaction, soil erosion, reducing nitrogen oxide emissions from ground water and surface water, enhancing water infiltration and improving water holding capacity. Thus, it helps storing carbon in soil and is one of the solutions for the mitigation of climate change.
