ADEA@ECHOING

2008-03-31T14:26:00.002+03:00

ADEA Agrovet once again has won the second recognition as a social enterprise. Echoing Green one of the funding organization for social entreprises has selected ADEA to their semi-finals in their very competitive and prestigious Echoing Green fellowship. ADEA was choosen from thousands of other business.

ADEA@GKP

2008-03-31T10:41:00.003+03:00

ADEA Agrovet has been selected as a finalist at Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) young social entrepreneurship competition in Malaysia.
This is the beginning of the series of recognition of the work that ADEA is doing to the farming community in Kenya.

HISTORY OF ORGANIC FARMING

2007-10-22T12:45:00.000+03:00

The organic movement began as a reaction of agricultural scientists and farmers against the industrialization of agriculture. Advances in biochemistry (nitrogen fertilizer) and engineering (the internal combustion engine) in the early 20th century led to profound changes in farming. Research in plant breeding produced hybrid seeds. Fields grew in size and cropping became specialized to make efficient use of machinery and reap the benefits of the green revolution. Technological advances during World War II spurred on post-war innovation in all aspects of agriculture, resulting in such advances as large-scale irrigation, fertilization, and the use of pesticides. Ammonium nitrate, used in munitions, became an abundantly cheap source of nitrogen. DDT, originally developed by the military to control disease-carrying insects among troops, was applied to crops, launching the era of widespread pesticide use.

In Germany, Rudolf Steiner's Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture, published in 1924, led to the popularization of biodynamic agriculture.

The first use of the term organic farming is by Lord Northbourne. The term is derived from his concept of "the farm as organism" [4] and which he expounded in his book, Look to the Land (1940), wherein he described a holistic, ecologically balanced approach to farming.

The British botanist, Sir Albert Howard studied traditional farming practices in Bengal, India. He came to regard such practices as superior to modern agricultural science and recorded them in his 1940 book, An Agricultural Testament and adopted Northbourne's terminology in his book "The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture" in 1947.

Lady Eve Balfour, author of the organics classic The Living Soil, established the pioneering Haughley Experiment on her Suffolk farm in 1939 that ran for more than 40 years.

In the US, J.I. Rodale popularized organic gardening among consumers during the 1940s.

The Japanese farmer and writer Masanobu Fukuoka invented a no-till system for small-scale grain production that he called Natural Farming. In the early 1940s.

In 1972, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), was founded in Versailles, France. IFOAM was dedicated to the diffusion of information on the principles and practices of organic agriculture across national and linguistic boundaries.

In the 1980s, various farming and consumer groups worldwide began pressing for government regulation of organic production. This led to legislation and certification standards being enacted beginning in the 1990s.

Since the early 1990s, the retail market for organic farming in developed economies has grown about 20 per cent annually due to increasing consumer demand. While small independent producers and consumers initially drove the rise of organic farming, meanwhile as the volume and variety of "organic" products grows, production is increasingly large-scale.

As research and awareness continue to grow, organic farming is beginning to gain mainstream acceptance and institutional support at the federal level in countries such as China, although most of the subsidies are still currently targeted at large conventional farms.

ORGANIC FARMING

2007-10-22T12:35:00.000+03:00

Organic farming has been perceived to be a specialized mode of farming thats only left to be practiced by the excluded farming community. Its also perceived to be expensive and solely to be practiced at large scale level.

To start, Organic farming by defination is a form of agriculture which avoids or largely excludes the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, plant growth regulators, and livestock feed additives.

According to the international organic farming organization IFOAM : "The role of organic agriculture, whether in farming, processing, distribution, or consumption, is to sustain and enhance the health of ecosystems and organisms from the smallest in the soil to human beings."

Approximately 31 million hectares (75 million acres) worldwide are now grown organically.

The big question is: HOW MANY ACREAS ATTRIBUTES TO ORGANIC FARMING IN KENYA?

LETS GET ORGANIC!

ADEA@ECHOING

ADEA@GKP

HISTORY OF ORGANIC FARMING

ORGANIC FARMING