Tag : Farming

Dehradun: Ganga, which traverses thousands of miles through distinctive terrains and geographies, is not just a sacred river but also a lifeline to millions of Indians who live along its course. Thus, ensuring its sanctity and untainted fluidity is an unstated responsibility of all citizens. And, in order to achieve this objective, the government has been tirelessly working for the river's conservation to free it of all contamination and rejuvenation with its tributaries. In what could be termed an integrated effort to accomplish its mission, the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) has roped in nearly all stakeholders under its flagship programme 'Namami Gange'. "We are now trying to take up a few activities, in which, one of them is natural farming on either side i.e. 10 kilometres alongside river Ganga. In Uttarakhand, we are focusing on that because we have already taken up lots of sewage treatment plants (STPs). We would like to have the non-point pollution sources like fertilizers from agriculture and other industries not flowing into the river. So, as a part of that, we want to encourage farmers to take up natural or organic farming, which means that we would like to discourage farmers from going for chemical fertilizers and go for natural fertilizers," said NMCG Director General, G Asok Kumar. To protect the Ganga from toxic insecticides and pesticides, the government had appealed to farmers of Uttarakhand to adopt an alternate farming method. And today, just in a few years, the dominant form of farming in the region is organic farming. These farmers in the Chamoli district of the state are being trained to produce bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides independently. One of the farmers in Chamoli, Mohan Singh told ANI, " ...