Environmental-economics of crop production by vermiculture: economically viable & environmentally sustainable over chemical agriculture.

The new economic theory of development today is ‘Environmental-Economics’ which advocates for judicious balance between ‘economy and ecology’ in all developmental programs including agricultural development and amalgamation of ‘economic development’ programs with ‘ecological conservation’ strategies to usher in the era of sustainable development. The new economic philosophy of development also stresses mankind to switch over from the ‘fossil fuel (petroleum products) based economy’ to ‘renewable resource based & waste recycling based economy’. We have to understand that every natural resource, commodity, goods and services that we use from the environment has an ‘environmental cost’ (the hidden cost of environmental damage & repair while the raw material is procured from the earthly resources) other than its ‘economic cost’ (the cost of processing, manufacturing and trading) and only after adding the two costs, we arrive at the true cost of the product. There may be ‘social cost’ as well in the form of impaired human health and quality of life. We only pay for the cost of food grown in farms and its processing and transport. We never pay for the damage done to the environment due to production and use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in their factories. Conventional economists are not bothered to deduct the cost of environmental damage (e.g. degradation of farmland & soil) and the cost of environmental repair and restoration (e.g. soil regeneration and management of degraded lands) from the GNP of nations. But the environmental-economists do (189). The cost of production of vermicompost is simply insignificant as compared to chemical fertilizers. While vermicompost is produced from a ‘cheap raw material’ (community wastes including farm wastes) which is in plenty all over the world and is growing in quantity with the growing human population, the chemical fertilizers are obtained from ‘petroleum products’ which are not only very ‘costly raw materials’ but also a ‘vanishing resource’ on earth. And while vermicompost can be produced ‘on farms’ by all farmers, big and small, the chemical fertilizers has to be produced in ‘factories’ at a high economic and environmental cost. This means vermicompost can be afforded by all farmers. The worms itself becomes an economically valuable products for the farmers to be sold to fishery, poultry, dairy and pharmaceutical industries.