Organic Farming for Food Security and Biodiversity Conservation

WWF-India with support from Dept. of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, a project was initiated in the year 2004 to improve upon the traditional system of applying organic matter in their agriculture field for manuring by building up the capacity of the local farmers to produce and apply organic manure and also to analyse the impact of removal of leaf litter, traditionally used for mulching in agriculture crop, on natural forest regeneration.

In the project three demonstration sites in the land of selected farmers were established for the production of liquid manure, weed compost and vermicompost. Series of training workshops were organized for the farmers from the villages in and around Dirang. In last phase of this project, impact of the project on crop yield were analysed and the final report has been submitted.

Of the three established demonstration sites in the land of local farmers, two farmers are presently earning benefit from increase in crop productivity, marketing of compost and earth worm and decline in investment for purchasing inorganic manure. Productivity of four crops were studied before and after application of prepared organic manure and it has been found that productivity of potato and cabbage have increased by nearly 66%. Of the farmers trained in various training workshop organized on organic manure preparation technique, 4 farmers have started their own unit for preparing vermicompost and 7 farmers have started units for preparing weed compost. The study of impact of leaf litter removal from the forest floor for mulching on natural regeneration reveled that the traditional practice encourages regeneration of only oak tree.