Imphal, February 02: With the objective of encouraging farmers to adopt organic method of farming to increase their agricultural produce, a two-day training programme for farmers on organic farming has been commenced from today at Khuman Lampak Youth Hostel.

Director of Agriculture, Government of Manipur Dr S Amu Singh, Senior Scientists of ICAR, Manipur Centre Dr BN Rao and Sr Mausumi Raychoudhuri inaugurated the training programme as chief guest, guest of honour and chairman respectively.

The training programme is being jointly organised by Regional Centre for Organic Farming, Imphal which is under Union Ministry of Agriculture and Manipur Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium (MSFAC).

Giving the key note address at the function, Project Co-ordinator of MSFAC MS Khaidem detailed the objective of organising the training programme and said it is to encourage farmers to adopt organising farming instead of the earlier method of using chemical fertilizer, insecticide and growth enhancing hormone, which in fact is very harmful to the soil in the long run.

Elaborating on the activities of the MSFAC, he informed that even before the Union Ministry of Agriculture gave its approval on implementation of organising farming scheme in Manipur, MSFAC had started cultivation of organic gingers and the produce exported outside the State.

He also mentioned that as a felicitator MSFAC took up contract organic farming of turmeric in 21 hectares and Passion fruit in 10 hectares last year with financial assistance from State Bank of India.

Further more, MSFAC has facilitated in bringing umbrella organic certification of 23 hectares for growing Ginger and 12 hectares for Turmeric through an NGO, Destitute Women Upliftment Society, Imphal.

This certification has been facilitated by Spices Board of India, Kochin and the organic certification is done by the Netherlands based agency, Skal International, Bangalore, he added.

While disclosing that there is great of demand of Ginger and Turmeric products from Manipur in European market, he said that because of shortage of organic produce, MSFAC could accept supply order of only 32 MT of dried and sliced ginger out of the total supply demand of 250 MT.

In view of the great scope in organic farming of Ginger and Turmeric, MS Khaidem fervently appealed to the participating farmers to take up cultivation of these products through organic method and exploit the potential in a big way to improve their economy.

In the technical session of the training programme, Senior Scientists of ICAR, Imphal Dr BN Rao, Dr Anajani Jha and Assistant Director of RCOF, Imphal Dr K Bihari enlightened the farmers on the importance of organic farming and vermiculture.

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