Adopt natural farming to bring down costs: CM

Amaravati: Andhra Pradesh should emerge as role model in Zero Budget Natural Forming (ZBNF) for the entire country, said Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu. 

Addressing the gathering at a meeting held opposite Acharya Nagarjuna University campus on Saturday, Chandrababu Naidu urged the farmers to adopt natural farming to bring down the cost of cultivation. He announced that the 2018 has been declared as ZBNF year following the skill development programmes conducted for farmers in 2017 by renowned scientist Subhash Palekar.  

He said the State government successfully created awareness among 1.63 lakh farmers in the State on ZBNF. Chandrababu Naidu announced that by the end of this year, at least 5 lakh farmers would learn methods of natural farming. For this, the government prepared detailed plan of action, he informed.

It was aimed to create awareness among 60 lakh farmers by 2024, he added. It is estimated that the government would incur an expenditure of Rs 16,000 crore towards providing training to farmers, seed development and technology support. 

Majority of diseases could be avoided by consuming food items cultivated through natural farming, Naidu said.  ZBNF protects soil degradation and reduces input cost. Stating that in the future the entire country would go for ZBNF, Chandrababu Naidu said that the AP farmers have to prove that our model would be the best. 

He explained that the main goal behind encouraging farmers towards ZBNF was to reduce their input costs and increase the yield per hectare. He hoped that in the near future, large scale employment will be generated in the natural farming sector. Each and every single acre in the state will be converted into natural farming in course of time, he announced on this occasion. 

On this occasion, a Memorandum of Understanding was exchanged between Government of AP and Sustainable India Finance Facility (SIFF) to promote the ZBNF in large scale with high end technology in the state.