ORGANIC AGRICULTURE’S BENEFITS HIGHLIGHTED TO FARMERS BY EXPERT ADVISOR

Farmers in Africa have been urged to embrace organic agriculture to cut costs and reduce the impact on the environment.

Charles Bonaventure, a technical advisor to the East Africa Impact Centre, said that organic farming prevents reliance on non-renewable resources.

“It is an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity,” Charles Bonaventure said in comments originally reported by the Tanzania Daily News.

Organic agriculture is relatively uncommon in Africa, with GIZ, an agency of the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development that promotes sustainable development, previously reporting that just 0.2% of agricultural land on the continent is farmed organically.

Management practices linked to organic farming promote ecological harmony, according to Bonaventure, by minimising the use of pesticides, fertilisers and other inputs.

GIZ, which has provided finance for sustainable agriculture in Africa, said that a lack of knowledge about the production, processing and marketing of organic produce was part of the reason for the low use of organic agriculture in Africa.

To help change this, in 2019 GIZ set up the Knowledge Centre for Organic Agriculture, which operates through regional hubs in Africa.

In other organic agriculture news, the European Union has stated that by 2030 it aims to increase to 25% the proportion of its land that is farmed organically. Figures from 2021 indicate that only 8.5% of EU agricultural land is farmed organically.

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