Nana Nikuradze trained as a Germanist, not an agronomist. After having children she decided to grow healthy food for her family, and farming became her main work. With her husband and three children she manages one hectare in Samtredia, in western Georgia, growing sweet peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, chilli peppers, melon and corn, and selling the surplus in good years at the market in Kutaisi.
For most of her eight years of farming she worked the traditional way. That changed two years ago when she joined a Farmer Field School supported by the European Union and the Government of Sweden under ENPARD IV, the European Neighbourhood Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development, implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The schools trained farmers in using plant protection products safely, soil health, seedling and water management, and composting crop waste.
This year, for the first time, she is making her own compost from crop residue, straw, green plant matter and manure from her small dairy herd, layered and left to break down. "My goal is to replace 100 percent of the chemical fertiliser with healthy, organic compost and produce even healthier food," she says. Farmers in her village used to burn crop residues; "It destroyed the biomass in the soil, and it killed useful insects too," she says. What went up in smoke now goes back into the ground, cutting fertiliser costs.
She uses almost no pesticides, partly because she keeps bee colonies for pollination; pests are handled by hand and with pheromone traps from the field school. Rati Kharshiladze, an FAO agronomy and extension specialist, says some yield may be lost without chemical inputs, "but what is gained is soil, beneficial insects and produce that stays free of pesticide residues," benefits that grow the longer the practices are kept up.
Her broccoli, watermelon and melon come out smaller than those grown with chemical fertiliser, she says, but with better smell and flavour, and she would like shoppers to understand the difference and farmers who grow without chemicals to get more support. She plans a few small guest cottages so visitors can pick vegetables, cook Georgian dishes and build a compost pile. FAO says ENPARD has reached more than 1,500 crop farmers across Georgia through field trainings.
Source: FAONewsRoom
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