‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food

The states of Punjab and Haryana are known as the "food bowl" of India, as their agrarian economy provides a huge share of our food that India needs. The "green revolution" was quite successful in these states and made India a food surplus country, from one that used to face famine and depend on foreign countries for its food. (Despite our economically dysfunctional farming economy, India is currently one of the largest producers of food in the world).

An unfortunate side effect has been the overuse of insecticide, pesticides and fertilizers, and poor planning in the choice of crops leading to excessive depletion of groundwater for water hungry crops like rice (which is a staple food for half the country) - https://eos.org/articles/indias-food-bowl-heads-toward-deser... ... Due to this, the fertile soils are being damaged, and farmers are blindly overcompensating with even more fertilizers. The second problem that has now come up is that we are producing so much, that sometimes huge quantities of grain just rot in government storages.

So the new Chief Minister of Punjab had suggested a novel idea - if the central government were to increase their procurement price (the government is the largest buyer in India), a large number of farmers could shift to organic farming that would be more sustainable in the long run. While the produce output would be less by 25% to 40% with organic farming (hence the need of increase in the procurement price) less production can address the wastage that happens. Moreover, organic produce is said to be safer and healthier due to the very limited use of insecticides / pesticides and fertilizers, and that would make India healthier.

Never heard of holistic planned grazing. Regenerative agriculture encompasses (among increased biodiversity) everything that combats and reverses soil erosion and the effects on ground water. So also stuff like creating silvopasture.

Not sure what you mean with actually works. There is soil erosion (it determines the value of any farmland you buy) and methods to create new topsoil. Same with different levels at which you deplete ground water. Which part do you think to be quackery? Searching a bit it seems Alan Savory made some outlandish claims about carbon dioxide?

I don’t have a reference for this, but I seem to recall that corn ethanol in particular produced more CO2 in its production then you saved by burning it.

(Might have been a different ethanol. There are many things that can be turned into ethanol, and it matters if some are worth it and others are not).