Nothing Goes to Waste

26/10/2026

In Samtredia, in western Georgia, Nana Nikuradze walks between rows of sweet peppers and eggplant on the land she has farmed for eight years. She trained as a Germanist, not an agronomist. But when she and her husband began growing vegetables, farming became her main work – and, later, her cause.

"I always wanted to bring healthy produce to my family," she says. She has three children. "Later, I wanted to bring it to other people too."

Nana, with her husband and children, manages one hectare of farming land. There, they grow Sweet peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, chilli peppers, greens, watermelon, melon, corn, among other crops. In good years, the surplus is sold at a market in Kutaisi. In leaner years, it goes to local shops instead.

For most of those eight years, Nana farmed differently, compared to today. Her approach started to change two years ago.

Learning to close the loop

In Samtredia, Nana joined a Farmer Field School – supported by the European Union and Sweden under the European Neighbourhood Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (ENAPRD) IV, implemented by FAO – after a chance meeting organised by the local municipality, in which farmers interested in improving their practices were invited to a seminar. She found the sessions and consultations worth returning to and stayed on for a second year.

"To be honest, I had never used raised beds, even though I had been farming for years," she says. "I had not even heard about mulching."

For Nana, the Farmer Field School offered more than new techniques. "Working alongside young professionals, learning from them – that matters a great deal to me," she says. It's part of why she continues working with FAO, learning and improving her crop production practices.

This year, for the first time, she is producing her own compost – crop residue, straw, green plant matter, and manure from her small dairy herd, layered and left to break down into what she calls biological fertiliser.

"My goal is to replace 100 per cent of the chemical fertiliser with healthy, organic compost," she says, "and produce even healthier food."

It is also, she points out, a story about waste. Farmers in her village once burned crop residues and other leftover plant material rather than valuing them as a source of nutrition for the soil.

"It destroyed the biomass in the soil, and it killed useful insects too," Nana says. "Now we take that same waste and turn it into new energy, into bio-fertiliser." What used to go up in smoke now goes back into the ground – cutting fertiliser costs while, she says, producing safer food.

Farming without the spray

Nana uses almost no pesticides, herbicides, or insecticides – partly by conviction, partly because she keeps several bee colonies for pollination and won't put them at risk. When pests appear in her plot, she and her family deal with them by hand, using pheromone traps she received through FAO's field school. This year, stink bugs proved especially persistent, seemingly immune to the traps that work well against other pests.

"Farmers like Nana are making a trade-off every season," says Rati Kharshiladze, the FAO Agronomy and Extension Specialist. "Some yield may be lost without the application of chemical inputs, but what they gain is soil, beneficial insects, and produce that stays free of pesticide residues. That is not a one-season result; it is something that compounds over years."

That confidence in her own produce runs deep. More than once, Nana says, she has picked vegetables straight from her garden and eaten them on the spot, unwashed, simply because she knows exactly what has – and has not – touched them.

Produce that looks different.

Her produce doesn't always look like what shoppers expect, though. "My broccoli isn't as large as what's grown with chemical fertiliser," she says. "But it has a wonderful smell and taste." The same goes for her watermelon and melon, she adds – smaller but better-flavoured.

She thinks that gap in appearance is really a gap in awareness, and would like to see it closed – through more active testing and verification of farmers' produce by food safety authorities, and more visible support for farmers producing without chemical inputs.

A chain, not a single link

Nana's field school in Samtredia now brings together close to 25 farmers, part of a wider effort – funded by the European Union and Sweden, implemented by FAO – that has reached more than 1,500 farmers across Georgia through ENPARD IV field trainings. But she is quick to say that training alone is not enough.

"Organizations like FAO, government institutions, farmers, and then the consumer – it has to be one connected chain," she says.

She has plans to extend that chain further, one step at a time. On her hectare of land, she hopes to eventually build a few small guest cottages and welcome visitors – Georgian and foreign alike – to see, and take part in, the way she grows food. She imagines guests picking vegetables alongside her, watching her cook traditional Georgian dishes with what they've just harvested, and trying their hand at building a compost pile of their own.

"Whatever I do here, I'd want to share it with them too," she says. Alongside the guest cottages, she plans to grow her small dairy herd and add a modest chicken flock – enough, she says, for visitors to see something of what life in a Georgian village actually looks like.

"I believe a country stands on a healthy, well-tended village," Nana says. "That's why I want people from the city to see what a village really is, and how much it can offer when it has support."

About ENPARD

The EU supports rural development in Georgia through its ENPARD Programme. Aiming to reduce rural poverty, ENPARD has been implemented since 2013. The Programme started by supporting the development of the national agricultural potential. Subsequently, it concentrated on creating economic opportunities for rural populations in Georgia. Since 2021, the Programme has been working on improving food safety in the country, with additional support from Sweden, and FAO and the Czech Development Agency as the main implementers of this food safety component under ENPARD IV.

This article has been produced with the assistance of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of FAO and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.