Author(s):

Saikat Maji and BS Meena

Abstract:
Organic farming is rapidly gaining popularity among the farmers throughout the world. It is especially due to concerns about declining trend of quality of natural resources and presence of pollutants in food chain as a reason of decades long external chemical input based intensive farming. In this state organic farming is often seen as only feasible alternative which is supportive to environment, health and sustainability. Uttarakhand, one of the leading states in Organic farming in India, have a predominance of mostly traditional integrated crop livestock farming closed to organic system along with relatively unpolluted ecosystem. The state also have a vast number of certified organic farmers supported by well developed organizational structure for promoting organic farming as well as marketing of organic crop products. The present study analyzed the present and future prospect of organic farming in terms of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats from the standpoint of certified organic farmers of the state. Analytical Hierarchy Process was utilized two quantify the factors, based on prevailing field level situation, under above four dimensions. Study found that ‘abundance of organic manure and water’ was the most important strength factor (with a global priority score of 0.144); whereas ‘comparatively lower productivity of organic crop’ with global priority of 0.079; ‘Significant promotion effort by govt and non govt agencies’ (global priority score 0.096) and ‘sustenance and enhancement of productivity in long run’ (global priority score 0.082) was the most important weakness, opportunity and threat factor respectively.

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