The Chief Minister's Office of Uttarakhand, on Friday, 26 June 2026, shared that Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has urged farmers across the state to pledge to protect soil health, embrace natural farming practices, and conserve fertile land for future generations.

The official post quoted CM Dhami as calling on farmers to take a collective resolve — 'मिट्टी के स्वास्थ्य की रक्षा करने, प्राकृतिक खेती अपनाने तथा आने वाली पीढ़ियों के लिए उपजाऊ भूमि का संरक्षण करने का संकल्प' ('a pledge to protect soil health, adopt natural farming, and conserve fertile land for coming generations').

Context

Uttarakhand is a Himalayan state where a significant share of agriculture is practised on hilly, terraced terrain that is inherently vulnerable to soil erosion and chemical runoff. Decades of input-intensive farming have compounded soil degradation concerns, making the push for low-input natural farming methods particularly urgent in this fragile ecosystem.

CM Dhami's appeal is directed squarely at the state's farming community, asking them to treat soil conservation not merely as a government directive but as a personal and generational commitment.

Policy Backdrop

The call aligns with the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY), a Government of India initiative launched in 2015 to promote organic and natural farming clusters across the country. The scheme provides financial support to farmer groups transitioning away from synthetic inputs.

Uttarakhand has been among the states building on this national framework, given its ecological sensitivity. Indian states with fragile mountain ecosystems have increasingly adopted low-input agricultural methods to address soil degradation, reduce chemical dependency, and improve climate resilience in farming communities.

Stakeholders and Impact

The primary stakeholders are Uttarakhand's farming households, many of whom depend on smallholder agriculture in hilly districts. A shift toward natural farming carries implications for input costs, crop yields in transitional years, and long-term soil productivity.

Broader beneficiaries include downstream communities dependent on clean water sources, as reduced chemical runoff from farms in the Himalayas directly affects river quality across the Gangetic basin. Future generations, explicitly invoked by CM Dhami, stand to inherit either degraded or restored agricultural land depending on choices made now.

What's Next

Observers will watch for state-level follow-through in the form of farmer training camps, demonstration plots, and input subsidies for natural farming methods ahead of the next agricultural season. The pledge-based framing of CM Dhami's appeal suggests a community mobilisation approach, which typically precedes structured programme rollouts at the block and district level.

Whether the state translates this public call into measurable targets — such as hectares brought under natural farming or number of certified farmer clusters — will determine the long-term policy weight of the announcement.