Chennai: Kids get touch of organic farming

Ooty: National Green Corps (NGC) at Nilgiris district, along with the Central department of environment and school education department, has launched a unique project entitled “Touch the soil and grow your vegetables and save Nilgiris Bio-sphere.”

This is being done to tune in the young minds towards kitchen garden culture and pave way for organic farming from house level to conserve the soil wealth and the hills. 

The project, which is to be extended to all schools in the hills in phased manner, was inaugurated at St. Joseph’s Higher Secondary School (JHSS) here on Wednesday.   

Dr S. Senthil Velmurugan, chief education officer of Nilgiris, who inaugurated the project, sought co-operation for this project from the student community.

Mr V. Sivadass, Nilgiris district co-ordinator of NGC,  said this project is intended to orient the minds of school students to develop interest in organic farming and also to show interest in kitchen-garden culture to shape their minds towards chemical free farming methods from their house yards to help them understand the importance of farming, kitchen-gar-den and nature farming that in turn would help towards keeping a chemical and pesticide free soil health for healthy community.

“In this project students can grow plants even in pots to lend their contribution.  In this era of e-gadgets alluring the kids in a big way, this project would help the students to touch the soil and realize its importance in providing food to the world through agriculture and learn more about farming and nature farming techniques and also to focus their minds towards greening the earth,” he added. Fr. Belavandran, the Correspondent and Headmaster of JHSS were among those who spoke on the occasion.