Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, Agricultural College and Research Institute, Madurai - 625 104, India.
*Present address: Agric. Res. Station, Bhavani Sagar - 638 451, (T.N.), India.
Every one expects development without destruction but unfortunately very often it happens the other way. In the anxiety of increasing food production for ever increasing population of the country for the last 50 years, least attention was given to ecological agriculture. We have been able to keep pace with population and our achievement is in no way small as the production has increased from around 50 to 220 million tonnes by 2000 A.D. However the danger signals have started sooner than expected. Many of our highly productive soils are showing signs of declining productivity. One of the major causes for decline in the productivity of the soils is due to low organic matter content. Wherever the fertilizers has been continuously used without adequate supply of organic manure the decline is faster in addition to creating new problems of insect pests and diseases. To reverse this trend, one of the possible means is to go to organic agriculture. Organic agriculture comprises all those technologies involving using local resources and inputs and preventing losses at every stage, adopting technologies that are ecologically sound and economically sustainable. first and foremost in organic agriculture is to rectify the soil condition to improve the productivity and sustainability. Increasing biomass, pooling all the organic wastes, including agricultural and animal excrete enriching and applying it at right time.
