National Centre for Organic and Natural Farming

National Centre for Organic Farming is a nodal organization for promotion of organic farming under INM Division, Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India under Soil Health Management component of National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA). NCOF came into force in 2004, for implementing National Project on Organic Farming (NPOF) along with its Regional Centres.

National Centre of Organic Farming has been renamed as National Centre for Organic and Natural Farming (NCONF), Ghaziabad in March 2022 with five Regional Centres for Organic and Natural Farming (RCONFs) located at Ghaziabad (North Zone), Bengaluru (South Zone), Bhubaneshwar (East Zone), Nagpur (West and Central) and Imphal (North East zone).

The revised mandate of National Centre for Organic and Natural Farming (NCONF) will be as under: -

• Administration and monitoring of Office for National and Regional Centres of NCONF.
• Promotion of chemical free agricultural systems like organic, natural, regenerative etc, farming in the country through capacity building of stakeholders.
• To function as national knowledge repository for various organic and bio-fertilizer and assess market demand, supply and production capacities of production units in the country for such organic and biological inputs.
• To function as national knowledge repository for natural, organic and other chemical free sustainable farming systems, package of practices, best practices and success stories on natural and organic farming.
• To serve as nodal quality control laboratory for analysis of bio-fertilizers and organic fertilizers as per the requirement of Fertilizer Control Order, 1985 (FCO).
• To develop standards and testing protocols for various organic agricultural inputs.
• To develop facilities for testing, training, screening, monitoring and quality assessment of organic and natural farming products including facilities for agro¬chemical residue testing.
• To develop, manage and keep on updating the national database of organic and natural farming farmers, organic product producers, processors and input manufacturing facilities.
• To serve as Secretariat for Organic, Natural farming and other chemical free sustainable Certification System and will also work for developing standards and compliance assessment protocol for other worldwide accepted product and process certification systems for chemical-free agricultural systems including agro-chemical residue free certification.
• To co-ordinate and liaise with all scientific Institutes like MANAGE, SAMETI, ICAR, SAU etc and regulatory Institutes (FSSAI, APEDA, BIS, QCI, NABL and other Centre and State agencies) for ensuring quality at all levels for organic products and processes.
• To carryout IEC activities related to organic and natural farming system by organizing/participating in National / International Exhibitions/ Trade Fairs, Seminars and events.
• To create awareness and publicity by print and electronic media and publication of training literature, quarterly organic farming newsletter, half-yearly biofertilizer newsletter and validated and documented indigenous practices.
• To support Central and State Governments in policy formulation, monitoring, evaluation and introduction of new schemes, activities, programmes related to organic, natural and other forms of non-chemical farming systems.