Daybreak - India wants to teach natural farming in a system built on chemicals

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

In December, India’s top agricultural research body sent a letter to 74 universities with a clear message: natural farming is now a subject of national importance. Campuses are responding fast, planning new courses to train students for a sector under pressure. Export markets want cleaner food because consumers are paying closer attention to what they eat. In response, agri-input companies are adjusting their products.But Indian agriculture still runs largely on chemical inputs. Farmers face real risks during transition, research gaps remain, and jobs for graduates are still uncertain.Tune in.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording.

Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get alert, as soon as we release our first video. episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. In December last year, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, or ICAR, sent a letter to 74 agricultural universities across the country. It said that natural farming had become a subject. of national importance, and universities were urged to introduce it into their programs.

This signal carried weight, because you see, the ICAR advises, accredits, and funds these institutions. So when it identifies a priority, campuses respond. Over the following weeks, curriculum committees began meeting, Board of Studies, asked for course outlines. Across universities July emerged as a likely window for rollout. At the University of Agricultural Sciences in Bangalore and Punjab Agricultural University, plans are now in place to launch undergraduate courses in natural farming in the next academic session with postgraduate and research offerings expected to follow. Now, the timing of all of this reflects the kind of pressures building well beyond academia. As most of the

of us know. India ranks among the world's largest agricultural producers. And yet, its share of global agricultural exports stands at just over 2%. And one of the biggest constraints lies in chemical residue standards. In India, the permissible pesticide residues range is between 0.1 and 0.5 milligrams per kilogram. But in European markets, it is maximum 0.01 milligram. Which is why Indian crops grown under decades of chemical intensive practices struggle to meet these thresholds. And export rejections carry huge costs.

They matter even more in a system that is already losing an estimated 1.5 lakh crore rupees each year after harvest, largely due to. gaps in storage, transport and processing. Industry experts describe these losses as undercounted. So, export markets remain one of the few ways to recover value. Pressure has also intensified within the domestic market. Consumers are showing greater attention to food quality and sourcing. Agri-input companies have shifted product development towards more organic and natural, a change that executives say has accelerated over the last five years or so. And universities sit at the center of this convergence.

Nearly 50,000 students enter India's agricultural colleges every year. And their training shapes how farms operate, how inputs are sold and how food moves through markets in the following decade. Natural farming is entering classrooms at a moment when agriculture is being asked to clean up its act. So the question that comes up is quite straightforward and still unresolved. As India adjusts to cleaner standards demanded by global markets and more watchful domestic consumers, who carries the cost of this transition? Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host Nick Das Sharma and I don't chase the new cycle. Instead, every day of the week, my colleague Rachel

Vargis and I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Tuesday, the 3rd of February. When Indian universities began talking seriously about natural farming, the conversations were about changes that were already visible across Indian agriculture. These changes have built up gradually, have been shaped by policy decisions and market signals and shifts inside the agri input industry. You see, agriculture still employs nearly half of India's workforce and contributes over 17% to our GDP. Farming across most of our country continues to depend on chemical fertilizers and pesticides that have been in use for decades.

At the same time, organic farming occupies a very small share of agricultural land, a little over 4% as of March 2023. The thing is, natural farming works on a very different. rhythm. Farmers rely on inputs like cow dung, crop residues, green leaves and other botanical preparations. Over time, seed choice too becomes especially important. Seeds need to come from organic breeding and respond well to soil health, water availability and non-chemical conditions. So universities are reading these shifts with a long-term view. Students entering agricultural colleges today will graduate around 2030. By then, The sector they step into is expected to reflect changing consumer preferences,

export requirements and input economics. Industry trends point in the same direction. Over the last five years, agri-input companies have increased their focus on organic products. Executives at firms like Rallis India and Coromandel International talk about growing investment in biofertilizers, soil health promoters and non-hybrided seats suited to local conditions. For context, RALIS reported revenues of over 2,600 crore rupees in the financial year 2025. Coromandel, meanwhile, crossed 24,000 crore rupees. Export markets add another layer to this picture.

Like I said, India ranks among the world's largest agricultural producers and yet its global agricultural export share sits at over just 2%. And the reason for this is that the Western markets apply a much type of. threshold for permissible pesticide residue limits. Crop research dating back to the Green Revolution produce varieties that respond strongly to chemical inputs. So when fertilizers and pesticides are applied, yields do rise and chemical residues also rise along with them.

Closer to home as well, consumer behaviour has shifted. People are paying more attention to food quality and sourcing. Kamlai Saxena, a former executive at Rales, India, expects the natural farming input market to grow at 10 to 15% every year. And universities sit right in the middle of all of these changes. They train the people who move into the farms, research institutions, agri-input companies and government departments. To understand more about what this transition to natural farming is going to take,

stay tuned for the next segment. Let's be honest, movement inside institutions will not remove the constraints that farmers face on the ground. Education builds skills and awareness and farming decisions unfold under immediate economic pressure. And these realities exist side by side. One of the biggest gap lies in research. Conventional farming benefits from decades of data on yields, quality and input requirements. Natural farming, on the other hand, still lacks comparable baseline data.

Professors at agricultural universities point to unanswered questions around productivity, crop quality and how different inputs will interact over time. And funding plays a key role here. Universities and research institutions receive limited support for long-term natural farming trials. But knowledge builds slowly through field experience and incremental experimentation. And it is the farmers who feel the impact the first. Yield levels fall during the initial conversion period. Quality varies across crops and regions.

An income quickly responds to these changes. Ragi is a very good example of this. Under conventional farming, 10 quintals earn around 35,000 at minimum support prices. Under national farming, yields average around 6 quintals, bringing about 21,000 from the same land. And that difference shapes up everyday decisions at the farm level. Structures offer limited support during this phase. regulated systems that could help cushion income shifts remain underdeveloped. Certification adds more steps.

Farmers register land through government or private agencies, complete online procedures and rely on pure verification, which is probably why industry veterans speak in terms of long timelines. Saxena estimates that large-scale transitions towards organic farming will unfold over decades. Look what happened in Sri Lanka. In 2021, the country banned chemical fertilizers nationwide, but natural farming covered under 4% of farmland. Rice reduction fell by 14%. Tea exports stalled. Food security became weak.

The policy was reversed as early as 2022 amid economic strain. India's approach emphasizes gradual movement. Universities play a central role in this strategy by supplying trained professionals to both farms and industry. Universities also face challenges within their student communities. Career aspirations often stretch beyond farming, especially in a country like India. A 2022 survey at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University found fewer than 12% of students considered farming as a future career.

Nearly 60% wanted government jobs and more than a quarter looked towards business and entrepreneurship. Placement data also reflects these preferences. At the University of Agricultural Sciences in Bangalore, just over 16% of nearly 900 undergraduate students secured placements in 2023 to 24. And among nearly 300 postgraduate students, placement rates reach 37%. Similar patterns appear everywhere else. So you see why industry linkages matter. It's because they determine how much risk students are willing to carry. Better placements give graduates a reason to stay within agriculture. And companies gain workers trained for a changing market.

But still, the issue still remains. Universities move ahead by designing courses, while farmers, industries and students absorb the uncertainty at different points along this chain. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of a subscriber-only offerings and a full subscription offers daily, long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the website.

Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague, Snitha Sharma and edited by Rajiv Sien.