Organic World Congress - 2017- New Delhi

I attended Organic World Congress which was held in New Delhi (Greater Noida) on November 9-11. I  presented one paper which is the summary of my experiments so far, My experiments with Fukuoka Natural Farming. There were eleven presentations from Kerala.

It was quite a good experience,meeting many farmers from different parts of the world, 110 countries participated in the event.

Lot of presentations were from Biodynamic farmers,not sure if it is because of the popularity or effectiveness. Could  not see any papers from Subash Palekar's Zero Budget Natural Farming, may be because he is totally against the compost based organic farming and bio-dynamic farming.

But there were lot of small scale farmers, and most of them were cow based, it looks like cow is an integral part of farming, worldwide.

In the stalls, could see many companies getting into organic business, all employees with formal dressing....was a surprise to see such booming organic business

Could meet farmers/friends/great persons like - Nandish, Bablu Ganguly, Debal Deb, Jacob Nellithanam, Bharat Mansata, Visalakshi Padmanabhan (Buffalo Back), Umedra Datt, etc....

Some photos...

Rice-Duck farming system by Rijish Rajan

Happened to meet a farmer in Palakkad,Kerala who has been doing Rice-Duck farming since couple of years. He cultivates around 3 acres of paddy field and young ducks are released once the seedlings are 1 month old. Young ducks should not be allowed in water for many hours, initially it is just 1 hour. Slowly the duration can be increased, and feeding is done at night, mornings they work in the field. Initially they have to be trained to move to different parts of the field, otherwise they will be stuck in one part of the field. They have to be trained to get into the cage, once done, they will obey your order. According to him, this was a traditional method used in Kuttanad area (Alappuzha District of Kerala), later when chemical farming came into existence, this was forgotten. Fukuoka also talks about this method and he recommends to use 10 ducklings for 0.25 acre.

Ducks helps him in weeding, fertilizing, pesticide control (some times he has to use some organic pesticides)...He gets around 1500-1800kgs of paddy per acre and the cultivar is 'Kanchana'.

Some photos...