Conference on natural farming for revitalising environment concludes

Imphal: With a number of recommendations focusing on revitalising environment and improvement of soil microorganism with innovative technologies, the three-day International Conference on ‘Natural farming for Revitalizing Environment and Resilient Agriculture’ comes to an end at Central Agricultural University (CAU) premises in Iroisemba on Sunday.

The Union minister of State for External affairs and Education Dr. RK Ranjan Singh, Vice-Chancellors Dr. Anupam Mishra (CAU Imphal), Dr. BR Kamboj (CCS-HAU, Hisar, Haryana), Dy. Director General (Natural Resource Management) Dr. Suresh Kumar Chaudhari of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) New Delhi, Director(Instruction CAU) Dr. S Basanta Singh and Dean(College of Agriculture) Dr. Indira Sarangthem were present during the closing function of the conference.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. RK Ranjan said today, conventional farming is a common method of farming using external inputs and use of chemicals and fertilisers giving more emphasis on yield maximisation rather than yield optimisation leading to soil fatigue, high cost of production, declining factor productivity and causing imbalance in the ecosystem and lead to high dependency of the farmers on the market.

“I am so delighted to be with you as Vice Chancellor of this University and Chairman of the National Committee for development of the syllabus of natural farming which will be implemented in the ensuing year as UG and PG courses,” he said.

“Natural farming is considered as a cost- effective farming suitable for the livelihood of a large number of farmers and rural development.

“I am fully confident that participants of this conference from different countries have already discussed the various aspects of natural farming and some concrete recommendations might have been suggested,” he added.

On the other hand, Dy. Director General (Natural Resource Management) Dr. Suresh Kumar Chaudhari of ICAR, New Delhi stated that altogether 310 districts out of the total districts in the country are highly vulnerable to climate change and one of the solutions to this could be natural farming because it provides all possible resilient systems to agriculture.

In Manipur, Chandel, Senapati and Ukhrul are vulnerable to moisture stress in crops growth and development. Similarly there are four districts each in Meghalaya and Mizoram, three districts each in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Sikkim while one district in Tripura, he added. So these districts require priority solutions, priority investments and natural farming solutions, he said.

Vice-Chancellors Dr. Anupam Mishra and Dr. BR Kamboj also spoke on the occasion. Meanwhile, Sarangthem, who is also the convenor of the conference, said a lot of important recommendations with more focus on revitalising the environment and improvement of soil microorganism with innovative technologies by using cow-based natural farming were taken during the conference. A total of eight technical sessions attended by eminent scholars from different disciplines and Institutes of repute were organised; 153 research papers including oral and poster presentations were accommodated.

Total eight keynote papers and 24 lead lectures were delivered by researchers, 16 from India, three from Thailand,  two from Bangladesh, one each from Finland, Germany and  USA.