The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : Organic farming needs scientific approach

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 14, 2006
ePaper

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

Organic farming needs scientific approach

Staff Reporter

Package of practices needed, says VC

Coimbatore: The Vice-Chancellor, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), C. Ramasamy, underlined the need for a scientific approach towards standardizing organic farming practices, here recently.

He was inaugurating a five-day training programme on organic farming, jointly organised by The National Centre for Organic Farming (NCOF), Ghaziabad and TNAU. Twenty-five scientists participated in the technical proceedings.

He urged the scientists to develop cost-effective packages of practices for organic farming as suited to different crops, agro-climatic zones, and both irrigated and rain-fed crops.

Research

Prof. Ramasamy said that TNAU had undertaken research on a war footing to generate objective information that would enable placing the concept of organic farming in the right perspective.

The demand for organic food was steadily increasing, both in developed and developing countries. In retrospect, there was also an awakening on organic farming across the globe, he said.

Innovation

Organic farming as an induced innovation could never be a substitute for conventional or modern agriculture, but could be an effective complementary approach.

S. Natarajan, Director, Centre for Soil and Crop Management (SCMS), pointed out that strategies such as standardizing a package of innovative agricultural practices for organic farming, imparting training and demonstrating new organic farming techniques in villages needed to be promoted.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu