All for organic farming

Tej Pratap, Vice-Chancellor of Himachal Agriculture University, feels that organic farming should be promoted among small and marginal farmers of the country. It would help improve their economy, reports Tribune Correspondent Lalit Mohan from Dharamsala

Himachal Agriculture University VC Tej Pratap is preparing an organic farming plan

Everything around him is organic. He can speak on organic farming for hours with anyone entering into a discussion on the topic with him. His passion takes him to fields where he spends most of his time persuading farmers to shift to organic farming. He is Tej Pratap, who is serving in his second stint as Vice-Chancellor of Himachal Agriculture University at Palampur.

Unlike other bureaucrats, Tej Pratap is easily available to farmers. They can walk into his room and call him on his cell phone. Having travelled across most of the mountain regions across the world, including Andean, Alps, Asian uplands and the Himalayas, Tej Pratap has the experience to strike instant rapport with the hill farmers.

A thorough hill man from Mandi district of Himachal, he is busy these days with formulating an organic farming sub-plan for the 11^th Five Year Plan of the country. He has task on his hand to satisfy the critics of organic farming, who feel it is detrimental for food security of the country.

Tej Pratap is of the view that organic farming should be promoted among small and marginal farmers of the country. About 45 per cent of the farmers in India grow just for their own consumption. These farmers should be helped and supported to shift to organic farming. It would help improve their economy as their input costs to agriculture would decrease.

Farmers need to be persuaded to shift to organic farming

He feels that India can easily reserve up to 10 million hectares of land out of the 145 million hectares of agricultural land for organic farming. However, the country would also have to generate adequate manpower for disseminating technical knowledge regarding organic farming.

Born in Preyee village located at an altitude of 2,500 metres in Mandi, Tej Pratap completed his schooling from a government school. He did his post-graduation in botany with specialisation in ecology. Later, he did his Ph.D in agro-ecology from HP University, Shimla.

Besides being VC of Himachal Agriculture University, Tej Pratap has remained as Executive Director of International Competence Centre for Organic Agriculture, Bangalore. For his work for farmers in Tibet, the Tibet Academy of Agriculture and Animal Sciences, Lhasa, awarded honorary professorship of highland agriculture to Tej Pratap in 1995. He was also awarded by the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research at Beijing for developing technologies for hill farmers. In 2001 he was honoured with Himachal Rattan Award.

Tej Pratap has authored and edited 39 books, 52 research papers and five video films. The popular publications include The India Organic Pathway, Warning Signals from Apple Valleys, Sustainable Mountain Agriculture and Making Tibet Food Secure: An Assessment of Scenarios.