Our Correspondent
Kiphire | August 18
Leaders from five villages attended a day long workshop at Langzanger village yesterday on the topic ‘Understanding Development and sustainable agriculture’ with resource persons from North East Network (NEN) Chizami, The workshop was organized by the Langzange Village students Union.
In a daylong seminar, Wekoweu Tsuhah, Program manager, NEN discussed on modern development models and their implication on the lives and livelihood of farming communities and the environment. She touched on the issue of conserving natural resources including water, bio diversity and traditional seeds through strengthening agro biodiversity farming practices.
She also focused on the importance of growing local food as it has cultural, spiritual and political connotations and encouraged the participants to value local agricultural products more than imported food because local food is grown by the community. Stephen Gangmei, Program Associate, NEN while speaking on the impact of chemical pesticide/weedicide and fertilizers on the health of soil, water, air and human being said, “we are destructing our soil, water and air by using of all this things.” He added: “we may not know the effect of it immediately but it will surely have an effect on our environment and health.”
He also asked the farming community present to consult KVK in case there is any observation of infection on food crop by pests/insects, and also shared on traditional knowledge to control such infections, by using garlic and wild herbs/shurbs.
As an outcome of the workshop the gathering also came up with a five point resolution to do away with use of chemicals, pesticides/ weedicide in the fields; to introduce millet in large scale in jhum fields; to share and exchange traditional seeds; to revive all the traditional seeds like Job tears, barley etc; and tTo find avenues to install millet de husking machines in respective villages.
