Organic Farming

Mr Delo Nzila, an organic farmer in Bbombo area of Monze district using Musangu trees and maize stalks to improve fertility of soil in his field.

If organic farming is the natural way, shouldn’t organic produce just be called ‘produce’ and make the pesticide laden stuff take the burden of an adjective? Anyways, that is just the way it is…

Zambia is a country with a significant population engaged in farming. Our ancestors used efficient methods to do farming, and they were happy in practising farming, but today days have arrived where a farmer does not want his upcoming generation to do farming. Farmer’s suicide has become a major concern.

Now, the question arises why our ancestors were prosperous farmers, whereas farmers of today are not. A reason might be climate change, increase in temperature, and so on, but the main reason for farmers’ failure is the type of farming techniques that farmers are using nowadays. The story starts from 1960’s green revolution, the time when the country felt a need to increase food production to supply to the exponentially growing population, the government gave the slogan of ‘The Green Revolution’.

Though it increased crop production, it also converted the sustainable farming to become very unsustainable. Due to this, what happened was, the farmer now has to put more money every year for the yield of the crop. But compared to increasing prices and getting less amount of crops led to the dissatisfaction of farmers.

One can change this scene by doing organic farming, where sustainable farming leads to less input and more output.

Organic farming is an agricultural practice aimed at attaining a balanced ecological production management system that encourages and improves soil biological activity and biodiversity.

In current market trends, according to the natural marketing institute reveals that organically produced products are most accepted, the organic food industry is increasing rapidly, and it guarantees a high profit. Organic farming saves energy as the production method are energy efficient as compared to the conventional way, which uses natural resources for generating energy.

Organic farming continues to be developed by various organic agriculture organizations today. It is defined by the use of fertilizers of natural origin such as compost manure, green manure, and bone meal and places emphasis on techniques such as crop rotation and companion planting. Biological pest control, mixed cropping and the fostering of insect predators are encouraged. Organic products are the safest products for human consumption than any other food products.

Organic farm produce improves human health by ensuring risk to diseases like cancer, infertility and immunodeficiency is minimized. So there is more need for organic farming nowadays.