Crop Yields and Soil Organic Matter as Affected by Kyusei Nature Farming and EM Technology

U. R. Sangakkara, S. P. Nissanka, P. Weerasekara¹ and T. Higa²

University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka¹ and
University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan²

Full Paper (PDF File: 181KB)

Abstract

Organic or nature farming systems are becoming a principal component of agricultural practices of both developing and developed countries. However, the productivity of organic systems is low in comparison to the conventional chemical farming systems. Thus different technologies are being developed to overcome this setback and promote yields and provide returns to investment of farmers, especially in the developing world.

The technology of Effective Microorganisms (EM) extensively used in Kyusei Nature Farming utilizing microbes found in all ecosystems has been cited as a technology to overcome the above problem. Thus, a long-term study was carried out to determine the usefulness of EM on crop yields and maintenance of soil organic matter, Yields of crops grown with three types of organic matter and EM increased over time when compared to yields of conventional organic systems. More importantly soil organic matter contents were also increased over time, even with EM. This was in contrast to the common belief of the decline of organic matter with the application of inoculants, especially in tropical soils. The potential of using EM made with microbes available locally, as advocated in Kyusei Nature Farming for sustainable crop production in tropical organic systems is presented.