The Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) launched in 2015 – 16 by the Central Government is aimed to:

Correct — C, support promotion of organic farming in the country. PKVY was launched in 2015-16 as the organic-farming component of Soil Health Management under the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture. It works through clusters: about fifty farmers holding roughly twenty hectares between them convert together, and assistance of about Rs 50,000 per hectare spread over three years covers cluster formation, training, organic inputs, value addition and marketing, of which about Rs 31,000 per hectare is meant for the inputs themselves. Three years is not arbitrary — it is the conversion period a field needs before its produce can be sold as organic. Certification is by the Participatory Guarantee System for India, a peer-review method in which groups of farmers inspect one another's fields, which is cheaper and better suited to smallholders than third-party certification. The name says the same thing: paramparagat means traditional, and the scheme's pitch is a return to chemical-free practice. Note that PKVY covers the country generally; the North-East has its own separate organic scheme, the Mission Organic Value Chain Development for North Eastern Region.

• (a)make agriculture more modern and globally competitive. — A generic aim that fits no particular scheme, and it pulls in the opposite direction from a programme whose name means traditional and whose method is to withdraw chemical inputs.
• (b)provide improved access to irrigation and enhanced water efficiency. — That is the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana, launched in the same year, whose slogan was 'Har Khet Ko Pani' and 'more crop per drop'. Two 2015 farm schemes with long Hindi names is exactly the confusion being tested.
• (d)reduce dependence of agriculture on monsoon. — Another way of describing irrigation, so it fails for the same reason as (b). Organic conversion changes what goes into the soil, not where the water comes from.

Organic farming rebuilds soil fertility with compost, green manure, biofertilisers and biopesticides instead of synthetic fertiliser and pesticide. A field cannot be called organic the day it stops using chemicals; it needs a conversion period, taken as three years, during which yields often dip. PKVY is the central scheme that carries farmers through that period in groups, and it certifies the result through the Participatory Guarantee System for India rather than through paid third-party inspection.

Several flagship farm schemes were launched around 2015 and they are easily swapped. Sort them by the word at the centre of each name. Sinchayee is irrigation, so PMKSY is options (b) and (d). Paramparagat is traditional, which points to organic practice. Fasal is the crop, so PMFBY is insurance. Once sorted this way the item takes seconds. It is also worth knowing why the scheme is built on clusters rather than individual farmers: peer certification only works when a group of neighbours can inspect one another, and pesticide drift from an adjacent conventional field is harder to avoid when a lone farmer converts. Sikkim, declared India's first fully organic state in 2016, is the standing example of what whole-area conversion looks like.

• PKVY was launched in 2015-16 as the organic-farming component of Soil Health Management under the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture.
• It uses a cluster approach — about 50 farmers with roughly 20 hectares convert together.
• Assistance is about Rs 50,000 per hectare over three years, of which about Rs 31,000 per hectare is for organic inputs.
• Three years matches the conversion period a field needs before its produce qualifies as organic.
• Certification is through the Participatory Guarantee System for India (PGS-India), a peer-review system rather than third-party inspection.
• The North-Eastern states are covered by a separate scheme, the Mission Organic Value Chain Development for North Eastern Region.

• Reading Krishi Vikas as a general growth programme and picking the modernisation option; paramparagat is the operative word.
• Mixing PKVY up with the irrigation scheme launched in the same year, which is what options (b) and (d) are for.
• Assuming PKVY handles export certification; that is the National Programme for Organic Production under the Ministry of Commerce, with APEDA as its secretariat.

Usually as an aim-of-the-scheme item like this one, or as statements on the cluster size, the assistance amount and the certification system.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The certification system promoted under the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana is known as

  • (a)India Organic under NPOP
  • (b)Participatory Guarantee System for India
  • (c)AGMARK
  • (d)Bharat Organic Seal

  Answer(b) Participatory Guarantee System for India — a peer-review method in which groups of farmers verify one another's fields, which suits the scheme's cluster design.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which state was declared India's first fully organic state?

  • (a)Kerala
  • (b)Uttarakhand
  • (c)Sikkim
  • (d)Himachal Pradesh

  Answer(c) Sikkim — declared fully organic in 2016 after phasing out chemical fertilisers and pesticides across the state.