India’s Green Revolution has left us with embarrassing mountains of undistributed agricultural surpluses, and thousands of hectares of seriously depleted soils today. Yet it need not be so any longer.
Policies to Encourage Use of City Compost in India
Composting of city wastes is now a legal requirement for all urban local bodies in India , but Central and State governments have yet to perceive it as a social good requiring official nurturing. The paper describes India 's current agricultural scenario, the proven benefits of Integrated Plant Nutrient Management (IPNM) and the use of city compost in drought-proofing crops and restoring degraded soils.
Compost Stds MSW Rules
In mg/kg dry , for compost, and mg/litre for leachates and water:
Water Saving Thru Vermicompost
South Africa is the country I work in. I started off as a solid waste consultant and used earthworms for that. I marketed household and industrial composters with earthworms as the composting agent. This led to farming and research on organic farming for 8 years and as a private consultant I found that water savings can be as high as 80% if the right methods are used.
City Compost for Mountain Agriculture
Organic farming needs organic inputs. India’s carbon-rich soils made the Green Revolution possible, but today’s declining yields from organic-poor soils face a national shortfall of 6 million tons a year of organic manures for agriculture. This shortfall can be met by composting our biodegradable city wastes. This is now the law of the land. Household wastes are unusable and unwanted because we throw out all our wastes mixed together.
Integrated Plant Nutrient Management: A Discussion Paper
India’s Green Revolution rescued our nation from famines and built up huge surplus stocks of food-grains, but at the cost of over 11.6 million hectares of low-productivity nutrient-depleted soils, ruined by unbalanced and excessive use of synthetic fertilizers and no organic manures or micronutrients.
Urban Agriculture on Stabilised City Waste
The Municipal Solid Waste Rules 2000 required:
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