EM activity in Bhutan

The Nature Farming and EM project in the Royal Kingdom has had its fair share of ups and downs. This was principally due to the difficult access to remote regions and the non availability of good EM stock solutions at required times. Although the EM activities started in 1995 with the farming community under the purview of the Ministry of Agriculture, it was changed in 2005 to encompass the School Agriculture Program (SAP) of the Ministries of Agriculture and Education. Today the SAP is conceived as a program of vital value to the future generations by the Royal Government and as agriculture, especially organic and Nature farming are important aspects of the livelihood of many farmers of the Kingdom.
The SAP in the Kingdom started with 6 pilot schools. Today there are 1600 schools incorporated in the project from a total number of 525 within the Kingdom. The program has integrated Nature Farming with crops, swine, poultry, cattle and aquaculture. The approach to these projects is totally organic with the use of EM technology. EM technology has been taken up very positively in terms of educating the parents and communities by the students.

The main objective of the program are
· To inculcate the dignity of labor among the younger generation.
· To transfer the agriculture technology to parents and community.
· To supplement the class room teaching with practicals for scienceand geography lessons.
· To encourage self help groups for producing their own vegetables for hostel and generate employment in future. Some of the students will become future educated farmers, who will use EM for gardening.


We expect the students become good EM technical instructors within the Kingdom through this project.