The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines organic farming as the production system that seeks to make the most of planting resources, privileging soil fertility, and biological activity. In addition, this kind of production minimizes the use of non-renewable resources and does not use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. It is an agricultural technique that is being used more and more because it allows optimizing production, reducing costs, increasing profits by eliminating expenses on fertilizers and pesticides, and reducing the negative impact on the environment.

Despite this, this cultivation technique is at an early stage of development in Mexico, as producers are still unaware of its potential. In this context, a research team of the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo (UACh) carried out a diagnosis of organic agriculture in Mexico and a phase that seeks to train producers to promote its implementation.

In an exclusive interview for the Conacyt Information Agency, Dr. Rita Elise Schwentesius de Rindermann, who leads the project, said that, thanks to this work, she had managed to obtain a data base that contains the proportion of land destined to organic agriculture in Mexico and identified more than 150 certified products derived from this cultivation technique. "We started this is a research line many years ago, in 1996, because this valuable information wasnt available and gathering it allowed us to characterize and perfect the different organic agriculture techniques implemented by Mexican producers. It also helped us to support producers with technological packages that we design and test."

According to the doctor, who is also part of the National System of Researchers (SNI III), once they managed to identify the main organic products harvested in Mexico, they were given the task of working, experimentally, with some products of economic and commercial importance, such as coffee, avocado, and orange, among many others. "Recently, we focused our efforts on orange production, wher we managed to increase the average production per hectare from 15.5 to 40 tons. We decided to work with oranges because we were approached by some producers from Veracruz and Puebla who were anxious to increase their production," she said.

The first step is to identify small producers whose lands have the potential to increase production, then give producers informative talks about what organic agriculture is and about the economic and environmental benefit they would have if they implement it effectively.

According to the researcher, productive diversification is a fundamental element of organic agriculture, as it allows producers to take advantage of all the nutrients of the soil and, at the same time, propitiate adequate regeneration cycles.

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