Food and Agriculture Organisation to support nature farming in AP

Guntur: Food and Agriculture Organisation will extend technical assistance to Andhra Pradesh in nature farming to get better results. International experts in nature farming will impart training to farmers very soon in this regard.

The State government will hold a high-level meeting to chalk-out a future course of action soon. The Food and Agriculture Organisation country representative Anne Sophie, who came here to participate in nature farming training classes conducted by Subhash Palekar at ANU on Monday.

Speaking to The Hans India, she explained how the FAO will support the nature farming in the state. She said the FAO will hold three days conference from April 2 in Rome, where the nature farming will come up for discussion. She felt there is a need to develop quality seeds, create awareness among farmers to start nature farming in AP.

Anne Sophie said, “The farmers in Latin America and Japan countries successfully cultivated various crops using nature farming, are getting good income. They started multi-crop system to get more income.

The farmers in these countries cultivate pulses, fruits and flowers to get more income. If the pest is attacked, a bit in the one crop likely to damage, there will be less damage for crop, the farmers will get less loss. They will get income from other crops. I feel there is a need to implement such multi-crop system in Andhra Pradesh.”

Nature farming is also one form of agro-ecology, research is going on it in the Wageningen University in Netherlands and Rudalle University in USA also. Due to nature farming, land fertility will increase, she added.