Tamil Nadu - Vellore   

Rs.1,000 crore sought for organic farming

VELLORE: Farmers taking part in a seminar on ‘Natural Soil Wealth’ organised by the Apof Organic Certification Agency (AOCA), Bangalore, here on Saturday have requested the Tamil Nadu government to allot Rs.1,000 crore for organic farming in the State.

G. Purushothaman, president, Federation of Organic Farming Organisations of Tamil Nadu, said that the Karnataka government made a special allocation in its budget for organic farming. The State government should come up with a similar move to promote organic farming, which enables the farmers to obtain an increased yield.

Agriculture in India, including in Tamil Nadu, had traditional links to organic farming. Nature-friendly systems such as mixed farming, mixed cropping and crop rotation have been practised for generations. Sculptural inscriptions pointed to the fact that farmers in Thanjavur recorded a yield of 12 to 18 tonnes of paddy per ha from 900 to 1200 A.D., while in the erstwhile South Arcot district, they recorded a yield of 14.5 tonnes of paddy per ha in 1100 A.D. by practising organic farming.

Mr. Purushothaman said that a farmer in Cuddalore district had obtained a yield of 110 bags per acre of paddy (each bag containing 25 kg) by practising organic farming. It is possible to get a yield of 100 tonnes per acre of sugarcane through organic farming. In the last nearly 50 years, the soil in Tamil Nadu has lost its natural wealth owing to the repeated use of chemical fertilizers. It is time that that the farmers restored the soil wealth through organic farming, he said.

R.S. Annadurai, president, AOCA, called upon farmers to form themselves into groups and take up organic farming. Farmers in the U.S. used bio-pesticides made of neem oil in order to control the pests found in cabbage and cauliflower. In that country, farmers cultivated rice, pulses, spices, walnut, vegetables and gingili through organic farming. Buyers of textiles have started demanding textiles made of cotton grown using bio-fertilizers. The people of U.S. have also started using organic tea, organic coffee and organic salt. But despite the high preference for organic products among the U.S. consumers, U.S. imports of organic products from India were very meagre.

Mr. Annadurai said that according to data provided by the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority, Indian organic farmland constituted only 0.03 per cent of the total agricultural land. Of the total area under organic farming, rice and tea accounted for 24 per cent each, fruits and vegetables 17 per cent, wheat 10 per cent, cotton 8 per cent, spices 5 per cent, coffee 4 per cent, pulses and cashew 3 per cent each and others 2 per cent. About 7.5 per cent of the total organic production (1568 tonnes) reached the domestic market in 2006-07. Among the domestic consumers, 90 per cent were from the upper class and 10 per cent from the upper middle class.

The AOCA president called upon the farmers to tap the export potential, adopt organic farming and cultivate those crops which had a good market if exported under the organic farming label to U.S. and other countries, not to speak of the domestic market.

K. Dorai Raj, chief operating officer of AOCA said that the Centre has appointed 16 non-governmental organisations for certifying the practice of organic farming by farmers after inspecting their fields. Previously, the organic farming certification was done by a foreign agency, which charged amounts ranging from Rs.80,000 to Rs.1 lakh. The AOCA has now brought down the rate to about Rs.8,000. It checks whether the farmers were cultivating crops using bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides, and without using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Chemical inputs have degraded the soil over the years, resulting in the gradual decline in the quality of the soil. Farmers should resort to organic farming and crop rotation in order to restore the soil to its original healthy state, he said.

K.R. Suresh, assistant general manager, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, Vellore, spoke. Earlier, AOCA explained through a film how the micro-organisms helped the growth of the crop, and how chemical fertilizers destroyed the micro-organisms, which aided the growth of the crop.

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