Status and Constraints of Organic Wheat Cultivation in Punjab

This paper highlights the status, cost - benefit and constraint analysis of organic wheat cultivation based on the primary data collected from 85 organic growers and 75 inorganic growers for the period 2008-09 in two districts of Punjab. The area under all the organic crops taken together accounted for 26.95 per cent of the total operational area of the sample holdings. The major percentage of the organic area was under wheat, sharing around 15 per cent of the total operational area of these selected holdings. More varietal biodiversity encompassing more local/unimproved wheat varieties has been used for organic cultivation of wheat crop as compared to inorganic wheat cultivation. Organic wheat cultivation fetched more profit to the farmers to the tune of about 26 per cent even with yield reduction of 35 per cent, mainly due to premium price of the organic produce in the market. Biotic constraints such as diseases, insect/pest and weeds as well as a biotic constraint such as inputs, marketing and environment etc were found to be the critical constraints, confronted by organic wheat growers. Marketing has been found as the main problem for its mass adoption, because there has been no price guarantee or support from any government or private agency for assured returns on the lines of inorganic produces.