Despite its growing popularity, largely in the urban parts of India, organic food continues to suffer from lack of proper understanding of how it is produced, the processes involved, its health benefits and big role in building a more sustainable agriculture sector. For most consumers in the country, buying organic food products like organic milk is more of an economic decision rather than a health or sustainability choice. This is quite understandable, given that organic milk costs nearly twice as much as regular milk. However, a better understanding of the value of organic milk will perhaps help consumers subordinate the short-term financial pinch of buying organic milk to the long-term health and environmental benefits.
The technical definition of organic milk or any other organic produce for that matter varies from country to country. In India, organic food is defined and regulated by the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP), under the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA). According to NPOP, “organic products are grown under a system of agriculture without the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides with an environmentally and socially responsible approach.”
Such a broad definition requires some unpacking. The building blocks for a product like organic milk can be broken down as soil, farm inputs and the animals i.e., what we feed them and how we treat the animals in terms of health and their general well-being. Milk can be called organic when it comes from cows raised in conditions that are accommodative of their natural behaviour and the symbiotic relationship is not broken. Cows are fed fodder that is free from synthetic fertilisers and pesticides and are not treated with antibiotics or induced hormones to artificially increase milk production. Organic milk cannot be produced on an industrial scale with an industrial mindset. Among other things, that also means that cows are left untethered and have access to fodder and clean drinking water all the time.
Over the last more than a decade, we have created a closed-loop system in our farms that ensure that our dairy produce live up to the highest possible standards in India. This starts with the soil and a larger ecosystem where farmers are trained to grow organic fodder for the animals. It takes anywhere between two to three years to convert a regular chemical-fed agriculture land to one that is ready for organic farming. Typically, the organic fodder that is grown in such soil is made up of monocots (maize, ragi and local jowar) and dicots (cow pea and velvet beans) along with tree fodder (moringa). The cows are also fed azolla (an aquatic ferns) which is rich in proteins, essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals.
While what goes in is important, organic milk is also defined in terms of what we keep out or the absence of three undesirable elements, which are antibiotics, aflatoxins and preservatives. Sick cows are treated without any antibiotics, while farmers also ensure that naturally occurring toxins like aflatoxins (produced by moulds) don’t enter the animal food chain and fodder. Finally, milk is processed with zero human contact and shipped to the consumers without using any chemical preservative to increase the shelf-life.
The value of organic milk should also be appreciated from a larger environmental sustainability standpoint. We live in age of industrialised agriculture, which is not only polluting our food, but also the soil in which it grown. By following organic farming to produce the animal fodder, the soil gets rejuvenated naturally by completely avoiding chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Organic farms, interspaces two crops with a cover or forage crop that not only not pollute the air but is a great way to replenish nutrients back to the soil. For example, alfalfa (a flowering plant from legume family), a common cover crop, is not only fodder for farm animals but is also nitrogen fixer for the soil. Unlike in traditional farms, organic farms suppress weed through intercrop and a multi-crop technique. The post-harvest stubble is also ploughed back as mulch for the next crop cycle, thus avoiding the polluting practise of stubble burning. Furthermore, standard organic farm techniques like hedging, bunding and trenching not only provide more efficient ways to retain and use water in the soil but also helps preserve soil nutrients thus creating an endless and virtuous crop cycle.
Even though the premium price of organic milk is a major challenge for its wider adoption in a country like India, the long-term implications makes for a compelling case to make the shift. Going organic on such a widely consumed food product will deliver positive results in terms of health, environment and a good life for the cows.
Organic farming practises also benefits the small land holding farmers, their farms and mitigate carbon sequestration with the goal of reducing the effects of the climate crisis.
This article is authored by Shashi Kumar, co-founder and CEO, Akshayakalpa Organic.