Four very different farming practices, from crop rotation to stacked indoor towers, all pass the same test: they cut chemical inputs without cutting yield.
🏛️ Must Know
Four Recognized Eco-Friendly Practices
- Crop Diversification Growing a variety of crops in the same area improves soil health, increases biodiversity, and breaks pest cycles.
- Legume Intensification Legumes fix atmospheric nitrogen and add organic matter to the soil, reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers.
- Tensiometer Use A tensiometer measures soil moisture tension, letting farmers practice precision irrigation and conserve water.
- Vertical Farming Vertical farming stacks crops in layers, cutting land use while enabling efficient water use and minimal pesticide need.
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📘 Good to Know
Why Each Practice Actually Works
- Diversification Breaks Cycles Growing different crops disrupts the life cycles of pests and diseases specific to any one crop, reducing pesticide reliance.
- Legumes Feed the Soil Legume roots host nitrogen-fixing bacteria, converting atmospheric nitrogen into a form other plants can later use.
- Tensiometers Prevent Over-Watering Precision irrigation guided by a tensiometer also prevents nutrient leaching caused by over-watering.
📝 Previous Year Questions
UPSC CSP 2020 — Which Practices Count as Eco-Friendly Agriculture
- UPSC 2020 Crop diversification, legume intensification, tensiometer use, and vertical farming all genuinely count as eco-friendly agriculture practices in India. See UPSC CSP 2020 GS Paper I, Q90. View this question.
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Great to Know
🌟 Great to Know
Old Wisdom and New Technology, Side by Side
- Traditional Meets Modern Crop diversification and legume rotation are centuries-old practices. Tensiometers and vertical farming are comparatively recent technologies.
- A Shared Government Push Indian agricultural policy increasingly promotes all four practices together, as part of a broader sustainable-agriculture strategy.
- Connects to Other PYQ Facts Legume intensification’s nitrogen-fixing logic is the same principle behind why permaculture avoids the soil salinity conventional farming can cause.
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