Boosting organic agriculture in Bhutan

There is great potential for organic agriculture in the HKH countries. However, despite the growing demand in both national and international markets for the region’s organic products, the promotion of organic agriculture faces numerous challenges in the HKH, owing to inadequate awareness and marketing mechanisms for these organic products; a paucity of technical and financial services; a dearth of quality inputs; and an overall lack of policy support.

It is therefore important to develop appropriate institutional mechanisms and innovative project and programme management structures, improve local capacities for responding to the needs of organic producers, and create an interest among all the stakeholders in order to ensure the sustainability of organic agriculture. To achieve these goals, strategies must also be developed to increase the knowledge and understanding around organic agriculture systems; they have also got to promote product marketing mechanisms in the mountain context and foster partnerships that facilitate gender-responsive organic agriculture.

Bhutan is one of the countries in the HKH that aims to go fully organic in the coming years. It has launched a flagship National Organic Programme (NOP) under the Department of Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture and Forests. We work closely with the ministry, NOP, and its lead agency, the Agriculture Research and Development Centre at Yusipang (ARDC-Y), to support the government’s initiative, which aims at producing safe and nutritious foods on a sustainable basis through an environmentally clean production system. Our goal is to facilitate the uptake of adaptation and resilience-building strategies by looking for simple solutions in developing an organic and ecologically friendly climate-smart food production system.