Natural farming is the only way forward\, says official

Andhra Prades

Natural farming is the only way forward, says official

Back to basics: Natural farming expert Khader Vali at a training programme at Hampapuram in Anantapur district on Sunday.

Back to basics: Natural farming expert Khader Vali at a training programme at Hampapuram in Anantapur district on Sunday.   | Photo Credit: R_V_S_PRASAD

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‘Fault lies in our following the western model of development’

For intensive agriculture and higher production goals, the entire country shifted from natural farming practices to clearing forest lands in two-thirds of cultivable space, said Joint Collector S. Dilli Rao inaugurating a training session on reverting to agriculture alongside forests.

With its emphasis on moving away from water-intensive and fertilizer/pesticide-intensive farming, the Atavikrushi - Grameena Sampada, puts onus on improving consumption of millets so that production also gets an impetus saving the country from investing thousands of crores in irrigation projects for paddy crops. Mr. Dilli Rao said fault lay in our following the western model of development. “We are getting addicted to rice and other modern cereals ignoring the health benefits of millets that our ancestors had cultivated and consumed to remain healthy,” he observed.

Adarana Prakruti Vyvasaya Kshetram — an agriculture college at Hampapuram — was a beehive of activity with its founder N. Ramakrishna inviting several experts and farmers who had successfully taken to natural farming. A farmer from Kondepi in Prakasam district displayed his foxtail millets crop for which he had taken the seed from Anantapur and narrated his success story.

Farmer suicides

Mr. Khader Vali, an expert in natural farming and advocate of ‘Atavikrushi’ farming alongside forest land or creating forest in 20% of cultivable land so that the natural balance in ecology was restored and the degraded topsoil gets restored, strongly believes all the farmer suicides in India were after modern agricultural practices were introduced in 1975.

The micro-organism from the fallen leaves of trees protects the humus of the soil, he explained. Another key activist of natural farming at Adarana integrated model farm, Y. Gangi Reddy, hoped that this kind of seminar and training programme would go a long way in motivating others. A lunch prepared with only millets was served to all the participants. The students from the agriculture college here every year go to Bidarahalli in Karnataka for a practical training on natural farming where Mr. Khader Vali had been growing millets in natural environs without fertilizers.

Joint Director Agriculture Habib Basha and Deputy Director Horticulture B. Subbarayudu were among those who participated in the programme.

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