Other traditional practices such as mulching the soil with biomass or keeping the soil covered with green cover round the year, even in very low water-availability situations, are added practices which ensure sustained productivity from the first year of adoption. Building on the central government’s push for organic, zero budget natural farming, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said in her Union Budget speech that the agriculture universities in the country will be encouraged to include these areas in their syllabus.
The Union government has started pushing the concept of zero budget natural farming as an initiative that will work towards making the vocation of farming more sustainable and improving the income of farmers by reducing costs of inputs, along with other measures such as better market access and improved product returns for farmers.
Zero budget farming focusses on shifting agriculture practices from mono-crops to diversified multi-cropping system. Desi cow, its dung and urine play an important role from which various inputs such as Beejamrit, Jivamrit and Ghanjivamrit are made on the farm and are the source of nutrients to soil for good agricultural production. Other traditional practices such as mulching the soil with biomass or keeping the soil covered with green cover round the year, even in very low water-availability situations, are added practices which ensure sustained productivity from the first year of adoption.
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On December 16, 2021, while addressing the National Summit on Agro and Food Processing, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had emphasised on natural farming as a ‘promising tool’ in improving the situation of farmers.
Following this, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the apex body for co-ordinating, guiding and managing research and education in agriculture, had issued a circular to all central and state universities to take initiatives to promote natural farming.
On Tuesday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, “States will be encouraged to revise syllabi of agricultural universities to meet the needs of natural, zero budget and organic farming, modern-day agriculture, value addition and management.”Dr Harihar Kausadikar, director (Education), Maharashtra Council of Agriculture Education and Research (MCAER), said the curriculum of agriculture universities in Maharashtra is revised every 10 years. The last revision happened in 2009-10 and the process of revising the syllabus is underway. The new syllabus may be effective from the upcoming academic year, scheduled to start in July-August 2022. “As per the ICAR directives issued in December 2021, the syllabus for post-graduate programmes in agricultural universities must include areas of organic farming, zero-budget farming, and natural farming,” said Dr Kausadikar.
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