Sustainable agriculture

There are several advanced technologies that are being used in organic farming to improve crop yields, reduce labor costs, and minimize environmental impact. Some of these technologies include:

1. Precision agriculture: This technology uses sensors, GPS, and other technologies to collect data on soil conditions, weather, and crop growth. This data can then be used to optimize planting, fertilization, and pest management strategies.
2. Biological pest control: This technology uses natural predators, parasites, and pathogens to control pest populations. This can include the use of beneficial insects, such as ladybugs and lacewings, or the use of microorganisms such as Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) as a biological insecticide.
3. Drones and robots: Drones can be used for tasks such as crop monitoring, precision spraying, and crop mapping. Robots can be used for tasks such as planting, weeding, and harvesting, which can significantly reduce labor costs.
4. Climate-controlled greenhouses: This technology allows farmers to control temperature, humidity, and other environmental factors to optimize crop growth. This can be especially useful for growing crops in areas with harsh climates or short growing seasons.
5. Biotechnology: Biotechnology can be used to create genetically modified crops that are resistant to pests and diseases, or that require less water and fertilizer.

It’s important to note that the use of these advanced technologies in organic farming must be done in compliance with the regulations and guidelines of the organic certification body, and in a way that does not compromise the principles of organic farming.

A shade house structure composed of two basic components i.e., frame and cladding material. The shade house frame provides support for cladding material and designed to protect against wind, rain and crop load. The shade house mild steel (ms) angle frame lasts up to 20 to 25 years, if anti rust treatment is done at regular interval, whereas bamboo structure can last up to 3 years. The agro shade net lasts for 3 to 5 years depending on the climatic condition. Shade nets are available in different colours with wide range of shade percentages viz. 25%, 30%, 35%, 50%, 60%, 75% and 90%.

The design of shade house’s frames depends on the need and engineering skill. Structural frames of Quonset, gable or gothic arch shape or with minor modification suitable to local condition are recommended in high rainfall areas like Orissa.

There are mainly two criteria for shade house orientation. They are the uniformity of light intensity in the shade house and wind direction. Single span structure may be oriented either in east-west or north-south direction but multi span structure should be oriented in north-south direction to ensure uniform light intensity.

The benefits of shade house are it helps in cultivation of flower plants, foliage plants, medicinal plants, vegetables and spices, used for fruit and vegetable nurseries as well as for raising of forest species etc, helps in quality drying of various agro products, used to protect against pest attack and from natural weather disturbances such as wind, rain, hail and frost. It is used in production of graft saplings and reducing its mortality during hot summer days. Used for hardening tissue culture plantlets.

Brown manuring is an eco-friendly weed management practice which suppresses the weed population and growth during the early stage of crop growth. Legume manuring crops supplies nitrogen to component crop plants through biological nitrogen fixation and thus, a significant part of nitrogenous fertilizer can be replaced. It increases organic carbon content of soil and improves the physicochemical and biological properties of the soil. Brown manuring’s can conserve soil moisture and reduce runoff and wind erosion. Enhanced soil fertility, lesser weed competition as well as other benefits accrued under brown manuring, leads to higher crop productivity and economic gain to farmers.

Choice of the brown manure crops is important as severe competition with main crops could cause detrimental effects and result in yield penalty. Ideally, the main crop and brown manure crops should have complementary resource use and niche differentiation in space and time to achieve optimisation in resource use. Crop species that are able to fix atmospheric nitrogen and help to maximize weed control while minimizing input cost and risk are the best suited ones. Other preferred criteria are affordability and easy availability of seeds, rapid crop growth and high dry matter production in less span of time, high competitiveness with target weeds, high ground cover to conserve moisture and reduce wind erosion.

Leguminous crops which fix nitrogen into the soils along with addition of organic matter are preferably used, such as dhaincha, sun hemp and cowpea; whereas the non-leguminous crops such as niger and wild indigo which provide only organic matter are less used. The combination of cereal and legume is considered ideal because cereals can utilize a portion of the nitrogen biologically fixed by legumes and the combination may provide multiple benefits like enhancement of yield, maintenance of soil fertility and production sustainability along with greater ecosystem services.

Brown manuring is the ‘no-till’ form of green manuring wherein a selective herbicide is applied to desiccate green manure crops before flowering rather than using cultivation (Das et al., 2021). The existing BM technique involves growing green manure crops preferably legumes with the main crop as a co-culture for the initial 25–30 days after sowing and thereafter desiccated by a selective herbicide. It is a ‘no-till’ version of green manuring, where the desiccated green manure crops are left standing in the field along with main crop without incorporation and is allowed to decompose itself in the soil. The desiccated leaves of green manure crops turn brown due to herbicide spray and hence the method is called brown manuring.