Nothing wasted, everything gained

26/10/2026

Nana Nikuradze trained as a Germanist, not an agronomist. But after having children, she decided that she wanted to grow healthy food for her family. So when she and her husband began growing vegetables, farming became her main work.

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

Nana, with her husband and three children, manages one hectare of farming land in Samtredia, western Georgia. There, they grow sweet peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, chilli peppers, melon and corn among other crops. In good years, the surplus is sold at the market in Kutaisi, the nearest, largest city.

For most of her eight years farming, Nana cultivated in a traditional way, continuing the work started by her parents and husband. Her approach started to change two years ago when she joined a Farmer Field School – supported by the European Union and the Government of Sweden.  The schools were part of the European Neighbourhood Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (ENPARD IV), implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The Farmer Field Schools focused on using plant protection products safely and efficiently, training farmers on soil health, managing seedlings and water effectively and reducing crop waste through composting, supporting organic production.

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 a biofertiliser.

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

It is also, she points out, a new way to look at 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.  What used to go up in smoke now goes back into the ground – cutting fertiliser costs while, she says, producing safer food.

Nana uses almost no pesticides, herbicides or insecticides, 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 Farmer Field School.

Rati Kharshiladze, an FAO Agronomy and Extension Specialist says, "Some yield may be lost without the application of chemical inputs, but what is gained 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. The longer the practices are maintained, the stronger the benefits."

Looks different, tastes better

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 this prejudice in produce’s appearance is really a gap in consumer awareness, and she would like to see it closed and get more support for farmers producing without chemical inputs.

On her hectare of land, she hopes to eventually build a few small guest cottages and welcome visitors 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 healthy, well-tended villages," Nana says. “We take what used to be waste and turn it into new energy, into biofertiliser.  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."

The ENPARD programme has reached more than 1 500 crop farmers across Georgia through field trainings. Aiming to reduce rural poverty, ENPARD supports the development of Georgia’s agricultural potential and creates economic opportunities for rural populations. Since 2021, the Programme has been working on improving food safety in the country, with additional support from the Government of Sweden and the Czech Development Agency.