Scientists at the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (Bari) claim that the adoption of organic farming can become the major solution to improve the soil alongside ensuring the farmholders with better profit margin and consumers with the quality food. Began in 2006, a field trial of organic farming over 33 decimal land at Bari has led to the doubling of the organic matter content in the soil that has also resulted in the reduction of input requirement and improvement of the quality of the crops and vegetables compared to those produced by a chemical input dependent method.
Over the last seven years of the field trial, the organic matter content in the soil was increased from 1.14 per cent to 2.79 per cent, while the cost of farming has similarly been reduced, found out tests done by the Horticulture Research Centre at Bari.
Last year, the quality of beans grown in the trial of organic farming at Bari was compared with the quality of beans grown in chemical dependent method by a test conducted in the Molecular Biology Laboratory of Dhaka University. The test showed that organic beans contained more oxidants than the
counterpart.
Talking to the news agency, Bari scientific officer (Olericulture Division) M Nazim Uddin said he is trying to develop a low input, but optimum output model with the trial of the organic farming.
The organic farming is saving about 25 per cent of the cost of fertilisation and pest control compared to the cost of the chemical input dependent farming, he said.
“First, we’ve adopted the principle of mixed culture. Right now you can see 16 crops and vegetables coexisting in the trial field,” he said, adding, “Mix culture creates natural barriers for insects and weeds.”
“Look, we’re growing coriander, sweet maize and grass pea along the four sides of the plot. Coriander will act as the barrier crop as it will attract insects first and put barrier to the spread of non-persistently transmitted aphid-borne viruses.”
“I’ve not yet used the Neem juice spray along the border which is use to drive away insects from the crops inside the border. I want the insects to have some feeding of the coriander which will wash out the viruses of the mouthparts of the insects,” he added.
“The reason I’m planting the sweet maize is basically its higher cash value. And it’ll not hurt the intake of the cabbage and coriander beside it because of the factor that the nutrient intake zone for its roots are located deeper,” he continue.
Inside the field, Nazim is experimenting the intercropping of red spinach, potato, cauliflower, lettuce, tomato, etc. in two ways – in lines prepared by hand digging of the topsoil with spades, and in patches of the soil covered by hyacinth mulching.
Nazim noted that the mulching disturbs the soil the less and requires less organic input from outside compared to the lines.
According to Soil Resource Development Institute (SRDI) records, about more than 1,200,000 hectares land of the country’s land area has become deficient in organic elements over a decade since 1998.
In the 1970s, less than 25 per cent of the country’s land mass was deficient in organic matter, said Md Moqbul Hossain, a principal scientific officer at the SRDI.
-With The Independent input
