ORGANIC NUTRIENT MANAGEMENT

Organic Farming
It is an agriculture system that works in harmony with the nature. It promotes and enhances biodiversity,
biological cycles and soil biological activities. Organic farming enhances the ecological harmony by
minimal use of off-farm inputs.
The primary goal of Organic farming is to optimize the health and productivity of interdependent
communities of soil life, plants, animals and people.
In simple words, it can be defined as a farming system which makes no use or limited use of any chemical
fertilizers, pesticides, growth regulators and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Nutrient Management in Organic Farming
The management of nutrients in organic farming systems presents a formidable challenge, as the use of
inorganic fertilizers is not permitted. Therefore, organic farming must optimize a range of soil, crop
rotation and manure managements to ensure a nutrient supply which will guarantee optimum crop yields
and minimize losses to the environment. To achieve this objective, an appreciation of the nutrient cycles
in farming systems is essential which is possible through various practices as mentioned below:
Crop rotation
It is the very basic building blocks of organic farming systems. It is a practice of growing a
sequence of plant species on the same piece of land. The succession of crops to be grown is
carefully designed to ensure soil nutrients are sustained, pest populations are controlled,
weeds are suppressed and soil health is built.
A crop rotation will cycle through cash crops (such as vegetables), cover crops (grasses and
cereals) and green manures (often legumes). The exact sequence of crops will vary depending
on local circumstances, with the critical design element being an understanding what each
crop contributes and takes from the soil. For instance, nitrogen depleting crop should be
preceded by a nitrogen fixing crop (Legumes). The central idea is to have the crops
themselves sustain soil health, rather than planting the same crop year in, year out, and then
repairing soil health through fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.

A well designed crop rotation makes land both more productive and more environmentally
sustainable. It improves the financial viability of a farm by increasing productivity whilst
reducing chemical input costs. Key advantages of crop rotation are: Improved soil fertility
and structure, disease control, pest control, weed control, Increased Soil Organic Matter,
Erosion Control, Increased yield, Reduced commercial risk, improved biodiversity etc.

Cover Cropping
Cover crops are the plants which are usually planted for the benefit of the soil rather than the
crops. Cover crops slows erosion, enhances water availability, smother weeds, improves soil
health, help control pests and diseases and increases biodiversity. Thus, we can consider
cover crops as a long-term investment for improving soil health and farm management. They
begin to pay for themselves in the first year of use, or it may take a few years for them to lead
to a net positive return. Cover crops also helps to attract pollinators and provides resilience in
the face of erratic and increasingly intensive rainfall, as well as under drought conditions.
Buckwheat, cowpea, mustards, radish, alfalfa, sunflower, sun hemp are beloved by bees and
beneficial crops. Stacking these pollinator plants in one field can lengthen the bloom period.

Cover crops can be either be sown after harvest of a cash crop, or they can be sown into a
standing crop (Over-seeding). Over-seeding is most commonly used to give cover crops a
head start before the winter in regions with a short growing season.

The cover plants that fits for our crop field varies by location and purpose. Different cover
crops have different strengths. While selecting cover crops for pollinators flowering broad
leaf species are a must. Grass cover crops pollen contains lower protein and do not provide
nectar while broad leaf cover plants higher nectar content and pollen contains more protein.
While selecting cover crops we should avoid the plants that serves as alternate host for plant
diseases. For e.g. if we are growing a brassicae vegetable then it wouldn’t be clever to select
cover crop of same family because it would support similar pest.

Non-leguminous cover crops, typically grasses or small grains, do not fix nitrogen but can be
effective in recovering mineralized nitrogen from soil after crops are harvested. When
legume or grass cover crops are killed and incorporated into the soil, living microorganisms
in the soil start to decompose plant residues. The biomass Nitrogen is mineralized and
converted first to ammonium (NH4) and then to nitrate compounds (NO3) that plant roots can
take up and use.

Addition of Compost/FYM
Composting is a biological process that requires careful monitoring of air and moisture levels
in compost piles or windows to produce specific temperature ranges (113 to 160 degree
Fahrenheit) that promotes growth of beneficial microorganisms. Organic residues (manure,
animal carcass, straw, grass, etc.) are the constituents of a good compost. Compost mainly
contains 2 percent Nitrogen, 0.5 – 1 percent Phosphorous, and about 2 percent Potassium.
Nitrogen fertilizers and manure may be added to speed decomposition.

Compost have many benefits to the soil. Fertility, water-holding capacity, bulk density and
biological properties are improved by the use of compost in our field. The regular addition of
compost is one of the best ways to enhance soil organic and humic content, which helps to
build a fertile soil structure. Addition of FYM/compost to the field improves microorganism
population in the soil which makes the soil alive with productivity and enables plants to
battle diseases and pests. It is found that the soil with 4% OM contains 4000 lbs total
Nitrogen/acre and the Nitrogen from compost becomes available to the plants at slower rate,
which reduces leaching and extends availability over the whole growing season.

Application of Green Manures

It is a simple practice of ploughing or turning specific plant or crop varieties into soil to
improve overall quality. The green manure crop can be cut and then ploughed into the soil or
simply left in the ground for an extended period prior to tilling. The main objective of
applying green manures to the soil is to add organic matter and thus, enrich it with Nitrogen.
Types of Green Manuring:
1. Green manuring in-situ: When green manure crops are grown in the field itself either as
a pure crop or as intercrop with the main crop and buried in the field, it is known as
Green Manuring In-situ. E.g. Dhaicha, Cow pea, Berseem, Mung, Sunn hemp, etc.

2. Green Leaf Manuring: It is the practice of turning the green leaves and tender green
twigs collected from shrubs and trees grown on bunds, waste lands and nearby forest area
into the soil with an objective to improve soil OM and Nitrogen content. For e.g. Wild
Dhaicha, Glyricidia, Karanj, Neem, water hyacinth, etc. It is a very useful practice
usually in the Hilly parts of the country.

Application of Crop Residues

Crop residues are the left over parts of crops on cultivated land after the crop has been
harvested. Straw, stubbles, twigs, leaves, roots, stalks, etc. are common crop residues. It acts
as soil cover as well as source of organic matter. These residues act as an anti-soil erosion
measure in the soil. Moreover, crop residues can improve soil structure, increase organic
matter content in the soil, fix CO2 into the soil and reduce evaporation.
The amount of manure produced and their nature varies between crop types. For e.g. cereal
straw contains only around 35 kg N/ha and has a wide C:N ratio while some green vegetables
contains more than 150 kg N/ha along with a narrow C:N ratio. The narrow C:N ratio of
green leafy residues means that N is released much more rapidly than from cereal straw.

Supplemental application of organically approved amendments

Soil amendments are the materials added to the soil to improve its physical properties, such
as water retention, water infiltration, drainage, permeability, aeriation and structure. They are
also known as soil conditioners. The main aim of using soil amendments is to provide better
environment for roots. Organic amendments are the safest and most effective means to
promote soil fertility. Organic amendments include sphagnum peat, grass clippings, straw,
compost, manure, wood chips, saw dust, wood ash, alpha alpha pellets, leaf moulds and bio
solids.

Animal Manures
Animal manures includes mixture of animal feces, urine, bedding materials (e.g. straw, wood
chips, rice hulls, saw dust), and other materials associated with animal production, such as
wash water, waste feed etc. Poultry and animal manures have been used to improve soil
productivity since the dawn of civilizations and are the primary soil amendment. It improves
soil physical and biological properties through the addition of organic matter. Fresh manure,
especially slurry and poultry manure, contains considerable proportion of Nitrogen in readily
(principally Ammonium-N) forms, which can be easily and rapidly lost to the atmosphere.

Bio-Fertilizers
Biofertilizers are the substances that contains microorganisms, which when added to the soil
improves its fertility status and promotes plant growth. It is one of the important component
 of Integrated Nutrient Management. It is cost effective and renewable source of plant
nutrients to supplement the chemical fertilizers for sustainable agriculture. Mycorrhizal fungi,
Blue-Green Algae, and bacteria are the common biofertilizers. Several microorganisms and
their association with crop plants are being exploited in the production of biofertilizers.
For e.g.
N2 fixing biofertilizers: Anabaena, Azotobacter, Rhizobium, Azollae, Azospirillum
P Solubilizing Biofertilizers: Bacilus spps, Pseudomonas striata, Penicillium sp,
Aspergillus
P Mobilizing Biofertilizers: Acaulospora sp, Glomus sp, Amanita sp, Rhizoctinia solani

Optimizing soil health is the foundation of organic agriculture. Organic aims to ‘feed the soil to feed
the crop’ by maintaining soil biology and nutrients at optimum levels throughout the rotation rather
than the non-organic approach of applying nutrients to feed the crop to maximize yield. Organics
therefore is a long term, whole farm approach to nutrient management. Organic Agriculture is the
ultimate solution to combat global food crisis and sustain the agriculture for future generations. Thus,
proper organic fertilizer management is crucial for high productivity of crops.