By Our Correspondent, Damak, July 3: Kamal Rural Municipality in Jhapa district has brought an 'Organic Manure and Pesticide Production Centre' into operation.

After a lab test of the organic manure produced here found that the manure was far better than expected, the employees of the agriculture branch involved in the test as well as the people's representatives have become excited.

A team of experts from the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) visited the centre and said that the manure produced here could serve as a model, said Menuka Kafle, chairperson of the municipality.

"We didn't even think to produce such beneficial organic fertilisers and pesticides," she said. Labs producing organic urea, bokashi manure, Kanchan liquid manure, decomposer and other manure have also been tested.

Prem Pokharel, a technician at the agriculture branch of the municipality, said that the NARC had determined that the paddy crop grown using manure was suitable for testing.

Nitrogen share was 25 per cent in organic urea, 13 per cent in bokashi manure and 0.98 per cent in decomposer, Pokharel said."Even the experts who came here were surprised to find that the amount of nitrogen in organic urea is so high," he said.

According to Mahendra Bohora, Chief of Agriculture Section of the municipality, arrangements have been made for the farmers to get the organic manure and pesticides produced here free of cost. Fertiliser has been made available free of cost to the farmers and farmer groups within the rural municipality for vegetable farming, said Bohora.

The municipality has been operating the centre on the premises of its office as well as that of Ward No. 6. About 2,000 sacks of manure and 20,000 litres of decomposer are being produced for the coming fiscal year 2021/22.

At a time when there is a shortage of chemical fertilisers, farmers can take advantage of the availability of quality organic fertilisers, said Narendra Bhattarai, ward chairman of Kamal Rural Municipality-6.

Although chemical fertilisers work for a short time, organic fertilisers are said to work for about two years from the date of their first use, he said. Farmers have started realising that organic manure is also important for soil improvement and have come to collect the manure, said Bhattarai.