2.organic farming adoption By Allah Dad Khan Visiting Professor Agriculture University Peshawar

Organic Farming Adoption Techniques

ByMr. Allah Dad Khan Visiting professor

Agriculture University Peshawar

ORGANIC ON THE OWN FARM To alleviate this situation, farmers need

to practise alternatives which are more environmentally friendly. Such alternatives include organic farming, which is a blend of traditional and modern farming systems. Traditional practices enabled communities to farm for generations before the introduction of modern technologies. This traditional wisdom needs to be documented and its value reinforced.

ATTITUDE TOWARDS RISK By supporting organic farmers’

indigenous knowledge, environmental adult education can make concrete links between the environment and the social, economic, political and cultural aspects of people’s lives. In this way, it helps to open new pathways for adult education, to confirm it as a community-based enterprise, and to make it a leader in the field of sustainability because, in the end, sustainability must be learned.

KNOWLDGE Indigenous knowledge is sometimes

limited to the knowledge of indigenous peoples, and other times applied in a broader context, such as to farmers. Overall, indigenous knowledge can be understood as the local knowledge of a defined community that has developed over time and forms the basis for agriculture, food preparation, health care, education, conservation and a wide range of other activities that sustain a society and its environment.

MOTIVATION  It was found that the reasons for

introducing organic farming practices varied with the timing of their adoption. Additionally, the kinds of organic-related activities adopted varied depending on how the individual adopter first encountered the term “organic farming.” However, all individuals involved in organic farming shared some common motivations, such as desires for personal health, quality produce and rural development.

HISTORY FUTURE OBJECTIVES OF ORGANIC FARMING ORGANIC AGRICULTURE: SOME BASIC TENETS Despite the range of

agricultural practices followed by organic farmers, most of them are guided by certain basic values and beliefs which may be called the "organic ethic." Some of the principal tenets of this ethic are summarized below. However, not all organic farmers would place equal weight on these tenets.

Nature is Capital -- Energy-intensive modes of conventional agriculture place man on a collision course with nature. Present trends and practices signal difficult times ahead. More concern over finite nutrient resources is needed. Organic farming focuses on recycled nutrients. Soil is the Source of Life Soil quality and balance (that is, soil with proper levels of organic matter, bacterial and biological activity, trace elements, and other nutrients) are essential to the long-term future of agriculture.

Human and animal health are directly related to the health of the soil. Feed the Soil, Not the Plant -- Healthy plants, animals, and humans result from balanced, biologically active soil . Diversify Production Systems Overspecialization (monoculture) is biologi cally and environmentally unstable. Independence -- Organic farming contributes to personal and community indepen dence by reducing dependence on energy-intensive agricultural production and distribu tion systems. Antimaterialism -- Finite resources and Nature's limitations m

TECHNICAL ASPECTS Organic farmers use various combinations of

technological and cultural practices because of certain underlying values and beliefs. The organic agricultural spectrum ranges from so-called pure organic farming on one extreme to more liberal interpre tations of organic philosophy on the other. At this latter end of the spectrum, organic agriculture begins to merge with so-called conventional agriculture. At this point the two systems share many common agricultural practices and organic and con ventional farmers express a number of common concerns. Here, the merging and over lapping of the two systems causes some difficulty in arriving at a concise definition for both organic and conventional agriculture.