Organic Farming

 

AR Rahman. I am quite sure; you all know him very well. The famous music director, world acclaimed and gifted musician. Now you go to him and hand him a cricket bat and tell him to play for India. Even if he has cricket as a hobby, he is not a professional. He will not be able to win. In a similar way, if Sachin Tendulkar is made to conduct an orchestra, he will not be able to do so. You may wonder where I am going with this. I will come back to that a little later.

Who loves mangoes ? Silly me, the question should rather be, Who doesn’t love mangoes ? But we all know mangoes don’t grow in desert. Yet we get ripe mangoes in the markets in UAE. How? Using advanced technologies of course. We human beings are very impatient, and no one can dispute that so, we add fertilizers to speed up the process of growing. To keep the pests at bay, we use inorganic pesticides and insecticides. And what do we get ? Fresh ripe mangoes. What else ? Chronic health issues, and unhealthy salinized soils. No longer, are our soils self-sufficient. And the long production chain doesn’t help much. It adds to the problem by increasing the carbon emissions and thereby resulting in global warming and finally indirectly resulting in climate change. In UAE, we have sandy soils, but if we force the soil to yield quality rice then as end result, we get devastated soils, incapable of providing us the old nutritious food. This is just like forcing AR Rahman to play cricket and Sachin Tendulkar to conduct orchestra. It is like forcing a 5^th grade student to appear for 10^th grade exam with 100% accuracy. In the long run, the child faces serious psychological disorders that result in the child’s inability to give back to the society. In a similar way, soils cannot contribute much if we continue inorganic farming. And this is why we must turn to organic farming. It is said that we have not inherited the land from our ancestors but rather borrowed it from our future generations. We need a doctor, a lawyer, a police officer atleast once in a lifetime, but we need a farmer 3 times a day. A good farmer is the one who follows sustainable agricultural practices and prevents soil salinity. So, let’s encourage sustainable organic agricultural practices, halt soil salinization and boost soil productivity. Please share and comment if you liked this post!