Crop Management Through Organic Means

Abstract

Organic means of crop management practices in this chapter indicates soil and pest management practices. It is an imperative issue to overcome challenges of declining soil fertility along with the need to increase food production for growing population. The main objective of this chapter is to assess how adoption of organic means of crop management practices differs among organic and conventional farmers with various socioeconomic characteristics, as in developing countries, even though there is an influx of modern inputs such as chemical fertilizers, farmers still incorporate traditional ways of soil management practices such as farm yard manure. Clearly there is lack of understanding on the extent of adoption of such options in order to guide in developing farm-level adoption strategies. The collected data was analyzed using multivariate probit model which regressed five soil fertility management practices, viz., mulching, compost-shed, bio-slurry, vermicomposting, and plastic cover, in addition to bio-pesticides for pest management against various socioeconomic variables of 285 organic and conventional farmers. Results show that mulching is the most traditional form which is still practiced under both farming systems, although the rest are mostly adopted by organic farmers. Fund assistance/credit availability contributes positively to adoption of high investment requiring practices such as compost-shed and bio-slurry, while bio-pesticides can be appealing to less resource holding farmers as it can be made from locally available resources as well. One of the ways to increase adoption rate is training as it complements technical knowledge required to implement these practices. Moreover, farmers are complementing one practice with another and some even act as substitutes. Thus, any effort to enhance such adoption rate can consider these characteristics of various practices.