MANDEVILLE, Manchester - Against the backdrop of the escalating cost of chemical fertiliser, Agriculture Minister Chris Tufton, is promoting organic farming as a viable alternative.

"We need to encourage more Jamaicans to do organic farming because the cost of chemical fertiliser is just too high and will rule out some farmers," Tufton told reporters during a recent tour of the Northern Caribbean University (NCU) organic farm.

According to Tufton local farmers will have to up the ante and practice more environmentally friendly and cost effective farming methods.

"Unfortunately not many of the farmers understand it, so they don't want to use it, so part of the thrust forward has to do with promoting the alternatives that are there," Tufton said.

He praised NCU for what he described as a "very practical" programme and offered assistance from his ministry to help spread the benefits of organic farming.

"The challenge is going to be how do we commercialise your techniques and convince more farmers to engage in that type of farming," Tufton said, "It's a challenge that is present but it is something that I would certainly like us to collaborate on."

The NCU organic farm programme, which was funded by the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica (EFJ), was implemented in August 2005.

According to Dr Vincent Wright, head of the Biological Sciences Department in the College of Natural and Applied Sciences at NCU, the project began as an initiative to reclaim bauxite mined land for agriculture.

Bauxite mining ravages top soil and valuable nutrients essential for good crop yields and mining companies usually dump about a foot of soil on land that has been mined of its ore.

Wright explained that organic farming could provide a boost in the nutrient quality of mined out lands as it reduces the need for consistent irrigation because of the high moisture retention capacity.

"Organic farming is different, it relies less on the nutrient value of the soil and it uses less water so I think it is a good way of bringing back the mined lands into effective production," said Wright.

Though the entire process of organically producing compost takes three to six months, the end result is a much cheaper fertiliser than store-bought chemical-based products and according to Wright 'a much healthier crop stimulant'.