Official lays stress on organic farming Himalayan News Service Lalitpur, August 9 With an aim of streamlining the sustainability perspective of Effective Micro-organisms (EM) in agriculture and environment and integrate the proven EM technology in plans and programmes, a national workshop on “EM Technology Application and Future Strategies” was organised here on Friday. "The rapid increase in use of chemical fertilisers in the past years has drained the country's revenue and polluted the foods and degraded our soil," said Kirti Bahadur Chand, secretary at the ministry of agriculture and cooperatives. “EM is the means to change all this, giving us eco-friendly methods that are inexpensive and helps generate healthy products too.” EM is a combination of various beneficial, naturally occurring microorganisms mostly used for and found in foods and local environment. The EM technology was developed in 1970s by professor Dr Teuro Higa, University of Ryukyu, Okinawa and first presented to the world at the sixth International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) scientific conference in 1986 in USA. EM was first developed for agriculture to accelerate composition through a process of fermentation and not degradation/putrefaction. It was further developed to be environmentally friendly and overcome pollution. It is being developed further to mitigate more hazardous problems of radioactive pollution, dioxin management and in some instances to control septicaemia and maintain hygiene. “EM is not the cure of all illnesses, but if used diligently, it can solve most of the problems that we face today,” said S P Yadav, president and executive director of the Community Welfare and Development Society (CWDS), giving his presentation on ‘Global Application of EM Technology’. “Furthermore, EM technology is more important to our agriculture systems which has become increasingly dependent on imported fertilisers and pesticides and economically unsustainable besides having increasing environmental problems of deteriorating soil fertility, polluted underground water, increasing chemical residues in farm produces, health hazards and many more,” he added. At present EM is being used in over 90 countries worldwide. In Nepal, EM is being used in agriculture, animal husbandry and other sectors. “Our country used to export agricultural products until the year 1989,” said Dr Gyanlal Shrestha, executive director, Green Energy Mission/Nepal. “The situation today has forced spending of over Rs 3 billion every year on agricultural and food products imports.” “Strange that the country, whose 80 per cent of the population are employed in the agricultural sector, has to depend on food imports to meet the needs of the people,” said Shree Ram Shrestha of USC Canada-Nepal. “In the past 40 years, we have achieved a little, but have lost a great deal,” he added. “We need to consider EM as an input, rather than a technology,” said Raghunath Prasad Sapkota, executive director of the Nepal Agriculture Research Council (NARC).