Promoting Sustainable Agriculture: Experiences from India and Canada

This paper is an attempt to examine the policy initiatives as well as experience of promoting organic farming in India and Canada where the need for promoting sustainable agriculture has been recognized in the policy statements. In fact, the policy initiatives if any, have emanated mainly from the viewpoint of trade concerns. In the face of these challenges organic farming is nonetheless making inroads in both India and Canada. Unfortunately, there are very few studies that have gone into examining the issues of economic viability, institutional support, and market access for organic farming in India n Canada. This paper tries to fill-up this critical gap by examining these issues in a comparative framework. The analysis, mainly exploratory in nature, is based on the existing literature and secondary data.[WP 162]