The role of organic farming in creating food security and sustainable livelihoods for India's smallholder farmers: a systematic review using PRISMA

Achieving food security and sustainable livelihood of smallholder farmers is a critical concern in many of the developing countries including in India. While organic farming is often projected as a one of the potential ways to promote socio-economic well-being of the smallholders in global south, there is a lack of clarity on how it has benefited the smallholders in India (a country with highest number of organic farmers), especially in securing their livelihoods and meeting their food and nutrition requirements. Given that India is one of the leading countries in the global organic movement, we seek to take stock of the developments so far in the Indian organic farming sector with an emphasis on the smallholders. We perform a systematic review of the studies of the past two decades in India using PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis) guidelines. We found 26 empirical studies suitable to critically appraise organic farming with smallholder farmers' food security and livelihoods as our focus. The findings of the review suggest that organic farming has helped several smallholders to earn a better income due to reduced input costs and better market price, although such outcomes are conditioned to availability of markets for organic products. Organic farming has also helped the smallholding households attain their food and nutrition requirements provided the farmers use efficient farm management practices and achieve yields comparable to that of conventional farming. However, the extent to which the smallholders are benefitted from the adoption of organic farming and the growing organic market is still arguable owed to numerous constraints (e.g., high labor cost, labor scarcities, lower yield from organic farming, inadequate marketing infrastructure, and financial barriers specific to the smallholders). Nevertheless, the systematic review offers a critical appraisal of the organic farming movement in India so far, especially by addressing food security and livelihood concerns of the smallholders.