Golden Harvest Vegetables For Health

Yellow and orange are some of the colors of autumn. They are also seen in the colors of the fall harvest in the form of pumpkin, winter squash, carrots and sweet potato. These delicious additions to your diet not only provide a wide range of nutritional benefits, but are an example of being able to eat seasonally and locally. Another plus is that they can be stored without refrigeration for long periods of time.

When it comes to nutrition, these vegetables have a lot in common. Because of their orange color, they are full of beta carotene. This nutrient has health benefits of its own, but can turn into vitamin A as needed by the body. These nutrients are important for eye and skin health, as well as for many other body tissues. They also play a role in the immune system.

Orange vegetables contain many other antioxidants, such as lutein, zeaxanthin, and alpha carotene that help protect the body from free radicals (a cause of tissue damage). These and other nutrients found in the orange vegetables fall under the heading of "phytonutrients" —— nutrients found in plant foods that contribute to optimal health that we are just beginning to learn about.

The antioxidants in these vegetables have the potential to benefit health conditions such as reduced risk of some cancers. They are important for growth, development and health in babies and children/teens. For adults, they contribute to overall health and reduced risk of tissue breakdown.

Vitamin C, K, E and several B vitamins are also found in orange vegetables, as are many minerals — potassium, iron, magnesium, manganese and copper. These nutrients have many jobs in the body.

When it comes to blood pressure, current guidelines recommend reducing our intake of sodium, while consuming more potassium. The orange vegetables are especially high in potassium.

These vegetables are great sources of fiber, as well. Higher fiber intakes can help lower cholesterol numbers and assist with blood pressure and blood sugar regulation. Fiber can also help with weight control because it adds bulk at a meal, meaning we feel fuller and overall may eat less. It also slows digestion so the fuel from a meal or snack lasts longer and we may feel the need to eat less often.

The soluble fiber found in these foods appears to be better tolerated by persons with irritable bowel syndrome as compared to the rougher fibers. It can also be helpful for persons with constipation issues.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 recommends that adults consume four to seven cups of orange vegetables a week (depending on the total amount of calories consumed). With regard to the new "My Plate" that has replaced the Food Pyramid, including more of these vegetables can help you to reach the goal of making half your plate veggies. Think back about your food intake this past week. How did you do with these nutrient-packed colorful vegetables?

If you are a little behind in achieving the recommendations, browse through the produce section this week and choose a few of these golden veggies to take home. Numerous recipes are available online. Because of their sweet (and in some cases nutty) flavor, they blend well with both sweet and savory foods.

All can be baked or steamed — whole, bite-sized, or mashed. Bite-sized pieces can be tossed with a little olive oil (maybe with a sprinkle of minced fresh herbs or other seasoning) and roasted in the oven until tender.

With the colder weather, they are a sweet and hearty addition to soups, stews, and chili. Roasting them before adding them to a soup adds even more flavor. They pair well with fruit like apples in a soup or add a contrast to the hot spices — cumin, chili powder or curry — in savory dishes.

Try simmering cubes of butternut squash and carrots with water, diced tomatoes, onions, coriander, cumin, turmeric, ground ginger, and a dash of cayenne pepper in a covered pot and cook until tender. Then serve over cooked quinoa or brown rice and sprinkle with chopped fresh cilantro.

Add some pureed pumpkin or orange squash to chowder for added nutrients and a nice golden color. Slip some into a muffin batter, pancake or waffle batter, or yeast dough bread. Spices like cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice and cloves can be added as well. Another option is to add pureed carrot, squash or pumpkin to tomato sauce and serve over whole grain pasta.

Pureed pumpkin or squash added to low-fat ricotta cheese and a dash of nutmeg makes a great filling for ravioli. Cooked squash can be added to a veggie lasagna, too.

Grated carrot can be added to muffins or other quick breads. It can be added to cooked grains like rice, for a dash of color. It can also add nutrients and moisture when used to make burgers or meatloaf.

For dessert, try a pumpkin or winter squash custard — like pumpkin pie without the crust. This provides the nutrients from the orange vegetables and milk while cutting down on the fat and calories. Try using low fat milk or low fat evaporated milk and reduce the sugar to save even more calories. A pumpkin cheesecake is another seasonal dessert that can be made with fat-free cream cheese and less sugar to lower the calorie count.

So do yourself a favor and take advantage of the delicious, colorful, and nutritious orange autumn vegetables.

Benefits Of Musk Melon

'Cucumis Melo' or Musk Melon is a native to central asia. It is grwon in the tropical regions for a very long time. Musk melon is widely known as 'Cantaloupe'.

Musk melon being an annual plant is cultivated from the seeds. The plants have to be watered lightly. It is a monoecious plant where the male and the female flowers are distinct. The melons are easily grown in sandy soil. Manure is essential for a healthy growth. Dry river beds are the most suitable for melon cultivation. Unripe melons should be stored at room temperature until they ripen. The two principal varieties of muskmelon are those with netted skins and those with smooth skins.

The creamy flesh can be consumed chilled or as fruit juice. With scientific advancements the melon growers have introduced many hybrids which are much tastier. Melons make a good combination for custards and fruit salads.

Musk Melon juice is beneficial to be consumed during conditions like Lack of appetite, Weight loss, Urinary tract infections, Constipation, Acidity, Ulcer. Musk melon reduces heat in the body to a great extent, relieves tiredness, enhances appetite and is an effective laxative. It is a good source of Vitamins A, B, and C. Musk Melons are rich in potassium, a nutrient that may help control blood pressure, regulate heart beat, and possibly prevent strokes.

If you are a dieter, then muskmelon is an excellent fruit for you. It has significant amount of fiber and provides you the feeling of fullness quickly. It can taste good and can make good combination for fruit salads and custards. Hence, a quick weight loss program ought to include muskmelon.

In addition to health benefits, muskmelon takes care of your skin too. It contains Vitamin A, which is useful in maintaining healthy skin. The fruit provides pretty fair amount of folic acid, which is especially important for pregnant women. It helps to create healthy fetuses and can even prevent cervical cancer and osteoporosis. Though it offers special benefits to women, men can also get great many benefits. Folic acid in the fruit acts as a mild antidepressant

Introduction To Green Manure

What is Green Manure?

 

The practice of ploughing or turning into soil under-composed green plant tissue for the purpose of improving physical condition as well as fertility of the soil is referred to as green manuring and the manure obtained by this method is known as green manure.

The green manure crop should possess the following desirable characteristics:

The green manure crops should

• have profuse leaves and rapid growth early in its life cycle.
• have abundance and succulent tops
• be capable of making a good stand on poor and exhausted soils.
• have a deep root system.
• be legume with good nodular growth habit.

Use of leguminous green manure crop is more useful in comparison to non-legumes, as more nitrogen is added by legumes. This will be advantageous for the soils and crops grown after green manuring.

Crops Suitable for Green Manuring

Crops suitable for green manuring are divided into two groups:

Non-legumes or Non-leguminous crops: The non-legumes used as green manuring crops provide only organic matter to the soil. The non-legumes are used for green manuring to a limited extent. Examples:Mustard (Brassica Sp), Wheat (Triticum Sp), Radish (Raphanus sativas), Carrot (Dancus carota), Jowar (Sorghum Vulgare) Maize (Zea mays), Sunflower (Hellanthus annus), etc.

Legumes or Leguminous Crops: The legumes used as green manuring crops provide nitrogen as well as organic matter to the soils. Legumes have the ability of acquiring nitrogen from the air with the help of its nodule bacteria. The legumes are most commonly used as green manuring crops. Examples:Sannhemp (Crotalaira juncea), Djainach (Seshania aculata) Mung (Phaseolus aureus), Cowpea (Vigna catjung), Lentil (Lens esculenta), Senji (Melilotus alba), Berseem (Phaseolus aureus) Guar (Cyamposis tetragonolaba)

Benefits of Green Manuring:

There are numerous advantages of green manuring:

Supply of Organic Matter: Green manure supplies organic matter to the soil. The organic residues from green manure also help to provide the stability of soil structure needed for optimum plant growth. Humus formed from green manure increases the absorptive capacity of soil, promotes aeration, drainage and granulation, which help the plant growth. Green manuring improves the structure of the soil. Organic matter stimulates the activity of soil micro-organisms.

Addition of Nitrogen: The green manuring crop supplies additional nitrogen to organic matter, if it is a legume crop, which has the ability to fix nitrogen from the air with the help of its root nodule bacteria (e.g. Rhizobium). The legume crop adds nitrogen for the succeeding crop. So all the legumes crop leave the soil in better physical condition and richer in nitrogen content. They return the plant nutrients of deeper layers to the upper top soil.

Nutrient and Soil Conservation: Green manuring crops act as cover crop. They protect the soil from erosion and nutrient loss by taking up soluble nutrients which might otherwise have been lost in drainage water or due to erosion. Green manuring crops make available phosphorous and other nutrients for the succeeding crops. Green manure has a marked residual effect also.

Increases the biochemical activity: The organic matter added to soil by way of green manure acts as food for micro-organisms. The organic matter stimulates the activity of micro-organisms and they stimulate the biochemical changes accordingly.

Green manuring increases crop yield: Green manure increases the organic matter and nitrogen content (in case of leguminous green manuring crop) of the soil. It is proved that if green manuring is done properly, it always results in increased yields of the succeeding crops.

Perfect Companions: Which Plants Grow Well With Tomatoes?

Companion planting is the planting of different crops in proximity (in gardening and agriculture), on the theory that they assist each other in nutrient uptake, pest control, pollination, and other factors necessary to increasing crop productivity.

Companion planting is used by farmers and gardeners in both industrialized and developing countries for many reasons. Many of the modern principles of companion planting were present many centuries ago in cottage gardens in England and home gardens in Asia.

Here is the list of good and bad companion crops for tomatoes

Carrots:

Carrots work well with tomatoes because they share space well. The carrots can be planted when the tomatoes are still quite small, and can be happily growing and ready to harvest by the time the tomato plants start to take over the space.

Chives, Onions, and Garlic:

Members of the onion family are beneficial to plant with many types of crops due to the pungent odor they emit. This helps deter many insect pests.

Borage:

Borage helps deter tomato hornworm.

Asparagus:

Asparagus and tomatoes are good neighbors. Asparagus puts on growth very early in the season, and the tomato plants fill in after asparagus has been harvested. Also, tomatoes help repel asparagus beetle.

Marigold:

Marigolds help deter harmful nematodes from attacking tomatoes. The pungent odor can also help confuse other insect pests. To deter nematodes, the best practice is to grow the marigolds, then chop and till them into the soil at the end of the season.

Nasturtium:

Nasturtiums help deter whitefly and aphids.

Basil:

Growing tomatoes and basil together increases the vigor and flavor of both crops.

Spinach, Lettuce, Arugula:

These are also "good neighbor" crops for tomatoes. They stay fairly small, and will grow better in the heat of summer when shaded by the growing tomato plants.

What Not to Plant with Tomatoes:

The following crops should not be planted with tomatoes:

Brassicas: Tomatoes and all members of the brassicas family repel each other and will exhibit poor growth when planted together.

Corn: Tomato fruit worm and corn ear worm are nearly identical, and planting these two crops together increases the possibility that you will attract one (or both) of these pests.

Fennel: Fennel inhibits the growth of tomatoes.

Kohlrabi: Kohlrabi inhibits the growth of tomatoes.

Potatoes: Planting tomatoes and potatoes together makes potatoes more susceptible to potato blight.

Growing Asparagus

Plant once, harvest for years: A well-maintained bed of this sweet, slender veggie will stay productive for up to 15 years, and, with its vibrant, ferny foliage, asparagus makes an excellent ornamental.

Gardeners have been growing asparagus (Asparagus officinalis) for more than 2,000 years, and this sweet, slender veggie’s staying power is no surprise: A well-maintained asparagus bed will start bearing one year after planting and will stay productive for 10 to 15 years.

A hardy perennial adapted in Zones 3 to 8, asparagus grows best in well-drained soil with a near-neutral pH between 6.5 and 7.5. The edible part of the asparagus plant is the young stem shoot, which emerges as soil temperatures rise above 50 degrees Fahrenheit in spring.

Types to Try

Because asparagus stays productive for so long, it’s important to plant the best variety available for your area. In cold climates, ‘Guelph Millennium’ and other varieties that emerge late often escape damage from spring freezes. In warm climates, early, heat-tolerant varieties such as ‘Apollo’ and ‘UC-157’ produce well before the weather turns hot. Gardeners in Zones 4 to 6 have a wider selection of varieties, including ‘Jersey Giant,’ ‘Jersey Knight’ and other hybrids bred in New Jersey for improved disease resistance and better productivity.

When to Plant

Plant asparagus crowns (dormant roots of 1-year-old plants) in spring at about the same time you would plant potatoes, but don’t rush to plant them if your soil is still cold. A few varieties, such as open-pollinated ‘Purple Passion’ and hybrid ‘Sweet Purple,’ can be grown from seed. Start seeds indoors in spring and set out the seedlings when they are 12 to 14 weeks old, just after your last spring frost. Start with asparagus crowns, however, to eliminate the year of tedious weeding that comes with starting from seed.

How to Plant

Choose a site with fertile soil that’s clear of perennial weeds and grasses. A single row of asparagus plants set 15 inches apart will fill in to form a 24- inch-wide bed, or you can grow a double row in a 36-inch-wide bed. Locate asparagus along the back or side of your garden, as 5-foot-tall asparagus fronds will shade any nearby plants. A bed of 25 mature plants will produce about 10 pounds of asparagus per year.

Asparagus craves phosphorus, which is usually abundant in composted manure and in compost made from kitchen waste. Add a 2-inch layer of rich, weed-free compost to your soil before planting. Dig a trench 4 inches deep and 10 inches wide in the amended soil and arrange the crowns in the bottom, about 15 inches apart. Refill the trench without stepping on the bed.

Maintaining Your Bed

Controlling weeds during the first two seasons will require rigorous weeding by hand. Pull out weeds early and often, and mulch with hay, grass clippings or another organic material to suppress weeds and maintain moisture. Weeds will become less of an issue as the plants fill in.

In early winter, after several hard freezes have damaged your asparagus fronds, cut them off and compost them to interrupt the life cycles of insects and diseases. Fertilize the bed with a 1-inch layer of rich, weed-free compost or manure topped with 3 inches of straw, rotted sawdust or another weed-free mulch. Clean spears will push up through the mulch in spring. Fertilize your asparagus again in early summer after you’ve stopped harvesting spears. You can top-dress with a balanced organic fertilizer, or scatter another inch of rich, weed-free compost over the decomposing mulch.

Harvesting and Storage

The exact dates of your spring picking season can vary by two weeks or more because of variations in soil temperature from year to year. Snap off spears longer than 4 inches at the soil line as soon as they appear in spring. As long as a new planting grew vigorously its first season (and your growing season is not extremely short), you can harvest spears for two weeks after your planting is a year old.

The next season, harvest all spears that appear for the first four weeks of active growth. In your third season you can harvest asparagus for six weeks, and by the fourth year the plants will be strong enough to tolerate a full eight-week harvest season.

Promptly refrigerate your harvested asparagus. You can pickle, dry, or blanch and then freeze bumper crops.

Growing Tips and Ideas

Get Psyched for Your Spears. Prepare your bed when you order your asparagus crowns so you can plant them as soon as they arrive.

Choose Male Plants. Most hybrid asparagus varieties are able to produce seven or more spears per mature plant because they are male plants that don’t expend energy producing seeds. However, if you’re growing open-pollinated or hybrid varieties that do include seed-producing female plants, dig out female plants to limit reseeding. Asparagus seedlings are difficult to pull and may become bothersome weeds in some climates.

Tuck Them In. Freezing temperatures ruin asparagus spears, so harvest yours before any harsh spring weather. During the first weeks of the harvest season, covering beds with row cover tunnels held aloft with hoops can help limit damage from the cold.

An Edible Aesthetic. Ferny fronds of asparagus are a beautiful addition to edible landscaping beds, and asparagus stems make great filler material in flower arrangements.

Outsmart Asparagus Beetles

Two species of asparagus beetles damage spears and fronds throughout North America: the common asparagus beetle (black, white and red-orange) and the spotted asparagus beetle (red-orange with black spots), which are both about a third of an inch long.

Asparagus beetles overwinter in plant debris, so removing fronds in winter will reduce their numbers. Lady beetles and several small wasps are major asparagus beetle predators.

Handpick adult asparagus beetles early in the morning when it’s too cool for them to fly. Asparagus beetle eggs look like stubby, brown hairs. Wipe them off of spears with a damp cloth. After they’ve begun feeding on fronds, asparagus beetle larvae (soft, gray, slug-like creatures with black heads) are unable to crawl back up plants if swept off with a broom. Many gardeners allow their poultry to clean up the asparagus bed for three to five days at the end of the harvest season to rid the plot of overwintering adults.

If you have an asparagus beetle problem but don’t have poultry, set aside a section of your asparagus to serve as a spring trap crop. Don’t cut the spears in spring within the plot, but patrol often to collect as many asparagus beetles as you can. In late summer, cut the fronds 2 inches from the ground and compost them. In three weeks or so, you can harvest a fall crop of spears from your trap crop plot.

In the Kitchen

Delicate spears of asparagus are welcome at every meal. For breakfast, asparagus pairs beautifully with bacon, eggs, ham or melon. Layer lightly steamed spears onto lunch sandwiches, or incorporate them into pasta salads, quiches or bread puddings. Asparagus risotto can round out dinner, or you can serve asparagus roasted, braised or grilled as a side dish.

Asparagus cooks quickly. Toss spears with olive oil, salt and pepper, and then grill for just two to three minutes. You can make roasted asparagus by cooking oiled and seasoned spears in an open pan in an oven at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for eight to 10 minutes.

Asparagus is an excellent source of folacin, a B vitamin that helps keep the circulatory system strong, and it’s a good source of potassium and vitamin C. Claims that asparagus fights cancer are based on its high level of glutathione, a potent antioxidant. Light cooking (such as steaming) for eight to 10 minutes increases the bioavailability of asparagus’ healthful compounds.

Fruit And Vegetables 'Give A Healthy Glow'

Even a few weeks of eating fruit and vegetables could improve your skin color, it is claimed.

University of St Andrews researchers monitored diet in 35 people, finding more coloration in those eating more greens.

Other research suggests these changes may make you more attractive.

Other scientists said the study, in the PLoS One journal, might not fully reflect the link between consumption and appearance.

It has been known for some time that certain yellow and red pigments called carotenoids found in many types of fruit and vegetables, can have an effect on skin tone.

However it is not clear exactly how much influence a normal healthy diet can have on this effect.

The St Andrews scientists recruited 35 students, mostly white, who were quizzed on their fruit and vegetable intake over a six week period.

The volunteers were told not to use sun beds, fake tan or make-up.

An instrument was used to analyze their skin tone before, during and after the test period.

The results suggested that changes in fruit and vegetable consumption might be related to changes in skin tone, with more fruit and vegetables contributing to a deepening of natural red and yellow skin coloration.

Earlier research by the team had found links between the perceived attractiveness of faces and even subtle changes in these skin tones.

"It is possible that even smaller dietary changes are able to produce perceptible benefits to skin coloration," they wrote.

However, they did concede that the effects on older people might be different, and that more research into non-white volunteers would be needed.

Food preparation

Dr Glenys Jones, from the Medical Research Council Human Nutrition Research laboratory at Cambridge University, said that another issue was that food preparation techniques made a big difference to how much of the carotenoids were available from food, and the study did not take this into account.

She added: "With the vast majority of the population not consuming the recommended five-a-day of fruits and vegetables, this could be another way of encouraging people through our own innate vanity to increase fruit and vegetable intake.

"After all fruits and vegetables contain a wide range of nutrients that are good for not just for our complexion, but for our overall health."

Dr Catherine Collins, a dietician at St George's Hospital in London, said that although people heavily exposed to sunlight were excluded from the study, all the areas of skin studied were those exposed to daylight, and the effects of this could not be ruled out.

However, she echoed the point that anything which encouraged people to eat more fruit and vegetables was a good thing.

"For the rest of us post-university people, it's another potential reason to carry on eating your greens - and red/orange/yellow veggies as well.

"The grown-up way of serving them cooked, or as part of an overall meal along with other foods, boosts bio-availability of these useful phytochemicals, which may contribute to overall health - as well as beauty!"

Health Benefits Of Fruits And Vegetables

The Female Face Of Farming: Infographic

Teach A (Wo)Man To Farm: the Agricultural Multiplier Effect

The Story Of Agriculture And The Green Economy

The future of our world depends on addressing global challenges now. We need to create sustainable livelihoods, feed a growing population and safeguard the environment. We need to make the global economy green.

Can Organic Agriculture Feed A World Of Nine Billion People?

A new meta-analysis suggests farmers should take a hybrid approach to producing enough food for humans while preserving the environment.

Agriculture has supplanted 70 percent of grasslands, 50 percent of savannas and 45 percent of temperate forests as a result of global climate changes. Modern commercial farming is also the leading cause of deforestation in the tropics and one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, a major contributor to the ongoing maul of species known as the “sixth extinction,” and a perennial source of nonrenewable groundwater mining and water pollution.

To restrain the environmental impact of agriculture as well as produce more wholesome foods, some farmers have turned to so-called organic techniques. This type of farming is meant to minimize environmental and human health impacts by avoiding the use of synthetic fertilizers, chemical pesticides and hormones or antibiotic treatments for livestock, among other tactics. But the use of industrial technologies, particularly synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, has fed the swelling human population during the last century. Can organic agriculture feed a world of nine billion people?

Environmental scientists at McGill University in Montreal and the University of Minnesota performed an analysis of 66 studies comparing conventional and organic methods across 34 different crop species. They found that, overall, organic yields are considerably lower than conventional yields but, this yield difference varies across different conditions. When farmers apply best management practices, organic systems, for example, perform relatively better.

In particular, organic agriculture delivers just 5 percent less yield in rain-watered legume crops, such as alfalfa or beans, and in perennial crops, such as fruit trees. But when it comes to major cereal crops, such as corn or wheat, and vegetables, such as broccoli, conventional methods delivered more than 25 percent more yield. But that is quantity, not quality.

The key limit to further yield increases via organic methods appears to be nitrogen – large doses of synthetic fertilizer can keep up with high demand from crops during the growing season better than the slow release from compost, manure or nitrogen-fixing cover crops. Of course, the cost of using 171 million metric tons of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is paid in dead zones at the mouths of many of the world’s rivers. These anoxic zones result from nitrogen-rich runoff promoting algal blooms that then die and, in decomposing, suck all the oxygen out of surrounding waters.

To address the problem of nitrogen limitation and to produce high yields, organic farmers should use best management practices, supply more organic fertilizers or grow legumes or perennial crops.

In fact, more knowledge would be key to any effort to boost organic farming or its yields. Conventional farming requires knowledge of how to manage what farmers know as inputs – synthetic fertilizer, chemical pesticides and the like – as well as fields laid out precisely via global-positioning systems. Organic farmers, on the other hand, must learn to manage an entire ecosystem geared to producing food – controlling pests through biological means, using the waste from animals to fertilize fields and even growing one crop amidst another.

Organic farming is a very knowledge-intensive farming system. An organic farmer “needs to create a fertile soil that provides sufficient nutrients at the right time when the crops need them. 

 Source: Scientific American

Featured image credit: Chillymanjaro

Hybrid Farming A Good Investment

The higher cost of producing hybrid rice is offset by the higher yields and income the farmers get, according to Dr. Frisco Malabanan, director of the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (GMA) rice program of the Department of Agriculture (DA).

“The use of hybrid seeds has tremendously increased our palay production by 1.47 metric tons (MT) per hectare, with per hectare yields hitting 6.01 MT against the 4.5 MT average produced by farmers using the inbred rice variety,” he said.

The DA official said the hybrid rice varieties have recorded a yield advantage of 33 percent more than those on inbred certified seeds. The yield advantage, he said, contributed to a sustained increase in the national palay production of the country.

He said in many provinces in the country, especially in Nueva Ecija, more and more farmers are now planting high-yielding hybrid rice seed variety and using the latest farming technology.

Henry Lim, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of SL Agritech Corp., the country’s top producer of hybrid rice seeds, said “hamak laki na ng inaani ngayon ng mga farmers sa Nueva Ecija na nagtatanim ng hybrid seed variety than before when they were planting the traditional or inbred rice variety and were not working as a group.”

He said the Bagong Buhay Multi-Purpose Cooperative (BBMPC) in Barangay Mabini in Sto. Domingo, Nueva Ecija, a cluster of 200 hectares, is one example where working together as a group or common sharing of resources, will have tremendous effect to increase production.

BBMPC has been named by the Department of Agriculture as a “model hybrid rice cluster” as its farmer-members have been posting an average harvest of 180 cavans or 10.09 metric tons (MY) per hectare using the SL-8H hybrid rice variety.

Lim at the same time commended the members of the BBMPC who, he said, “are receptive in adopting modern farm technologies and practices.”

He said that while “we are all aware of the important role played by technology in our massive food production efforts, there is the apparent need for all of us to keep abreast with the various technological approaches and to continuously be in search of new and better systems towards increase productivity.”

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Why Organic Food?

For decades our food and water have been contaminated by powerful, harmful pesticides which have been promoted as necessary for better agricultural output. But the reality is that we don't need pesticides for better yield, and their use is not only deadly for health but results in expensive farming methods. 

The solution is to adopt organic farming, which is possible and profitable, as the state of Sikkim has shown.