Revitalization of Rivers in India Draft Policy - Isha Guru Jaggi Vasudev

Revitalization of Rivers In India
Draft Policy Recommendation
mandatory in this model in view of its multi-fold benefits. The packages
of practices that can be followed for the fruit crops are given in Dr.
Kumar’s report (Annexure 12).
The Department of Sustainable Organic Agriculture of TNAU has a
web portal dedicated to organic farming. 49 The entire portal is in English
as well as Tamil and has a Section on ‘Organic Farming and Zero Budget
Special Technologies’.
SPECIFIC EXAMPLE OF A MULTI-FRUIT CROP MODEL: MANGO + GUAVA +
POMEGRANATE CULTIVATION
In this section, we take up a one-acre generic multi-fruit crop model
consisting of mango, guava and pomegranate, as these are the most
widely grown fruit trees.
In one acre, 32 mango trees, 75 guava trees, and 285 pomegranate
plants are used – leading to 392 fruit trees as the main crops. The spacing
for each of the three species are as shown in Figure 6.
Along the border, in the east-west direction as alley crops, two rows
of trees consisting of 14 jamun/jack fruit trees and 70 native and endemic
multi-purpose timber trees are planted. Along the border in the northsouth
direction, herbal and mulch plants are planted and maintained as
shrubs for mulch and bio-input needs.
ECONOMICS OF THE ONE ACRE MODEL
If this proposed model were to be implemented, the governments
should be willing to bear the short-term cost of livelihood loss for the
farmers. Also, scale and the pace of the scale-up required for the project
can only be taken up by state machinery. The major bottleneck of the
project will be the willingness and ability of cash crop riverine farmers to
convert to horticulture. In India, most of the small and marginal farmers do
not have the ability to absorb the risk of such a transition.
The challenge in the economic model is that the earnings of the
farmer for the first few years of conversion are below the threshold of
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