Singireddy advocates natural farming for keeping farmers out of debt trap

Wanaparthy: Stressing that the State government was focusing to promote natural farming and would take all measures to ensure that each and every farmer in the State gets financially strong and get out of the debt trap, Agriculture Minister Singireddy Niranjan Reddy, during a recent interaction with The Hans India, said that as an Agriculture Minister his priority was to ensure all farmers come out of the debt trap first and then, he would stress on promoting natural farming in the State. 

As it has been only a few days having taken charge as Agriculture Minister, Singireddy Niranjan Reddy said that he was very soon looking forward to have a detailed discussion with the Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and come out with a comprehensive draft agriculture policy in the coming up days.  

Speaking at a seminar on natural farming organised by Vishwa Manavatha Sansthan recently, Reddy said that it was only just four years have gone past where the farmers in the State were slowly recovering from disastrous rule of the previous governments who have broken the structure of agriculture in the district.

He said with Chief Minister announcing the financial support scheme of Rythu Bima and Rythu Bhandu, the farming community in Telangana has gained their confidence and enthusiastically getting inclined toward agriculture and have significantly increased the agriculture crop extension in the State. 

“Our objective is to see that the farmers come out of the debt trap and ensure that they become economically self sustaining. Once they are economically secure, only then the government will ask them to take up natural farming and then they can cultivate whatever the government suggests them to do so,” said the Agriculture Minister. 

In addition to Rythu Bhandu and Rythu Bima, the Agriculture Minister stressed that the allied sectors like cattle rearing, sheep rearing, fisheries and dairy are some of the allied agriculture sectors which the State government has come out with various welfare schemes and providing subsidies to the beneficiaries so as to help the farmers to gain additional income sources. 

The Agriculture Minister felt that by adopting allied farming businesses the farmers would not only get additional sources of income but the by-products from these sectors could also be used for making the soil fertile and this would help in ensuring the farmer take up natural farming without use of fertilisers and pesticides.  

The Minister observed that the State government was also contemplating on coming up with the idea of crop colonies. However, he said this concept needed to be studied more deeply and according to the soil, climate and water resources, the suitability of different crops could be suggested to the farmers. By adopting this concept, the farmers would gain maximum benefits with minimum inputs. 

Overall, the Agriculture Minister felt that natural farming was the key to bringing down input costs and urged the farmers to introspect themselves and accordingly take wise decisions so that they get economically strong besides contributing for the State’s growth.