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Palekar appointed advisor
With an aim to make agriculture more profitable, reduce input cost and to encourage and promote healthy and organic farming, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu met agriculturist and inventor of Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) Subhash Palekar at his residence at Undavalli on Wednesday.
Thrust on natural farming in AP
Amaravati: With an aim to make agriculture more profitable, reduce input cost and to encourage and promote healthy and organic farming, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu met agriculturist and inventor of Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) Subhash Palekar at his residence at Undavalli on Wednesday.
He has been officially appointed as advisor to the State government, responsible for formulating policies and creating a framework to foster organic farming in Andhra Pradesh.
The Chief Minister also requested Subhash Palekar to help build a university in Amaravati exclusively for organic farming. For this purpose, the State government has agreed to allot 100 acres of land and Rs 100 crore as investment.
Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister said that he will strive to transform agriculture cultivation in Andhra Pradesh into 100 per cent organic crops cultivation in the coming years and eliminate use of harmful chemicals and fertilisers in crop production.
Last year, Subhash Palekar had organised a training programme for thousands of farmers from all over the State on ‘Natural Farming and Making Agriculture more Profitable by Reducing the Input Costs’. The State government aims to train 10 lakh farmers in the next three years and is devising necessary plans to achieve it.
To ensure farmers’ welfare, the State government has initiated Zero-Budget Natural Farming during last year’s kharif.
This initiative covered a total of five lakh farmers and five lakh hectares in 2,000 villages and 50 per cent of mandals of the State spread over all the districts and all agro-climatic zones.
Another 260 clusters have been identified for initiating the work from kharif 2017. In all, 1.8 lakh farmers are expected to be on board this year.
The Chief Minister told the officials that natural products of Andhra Pradesh should be branded and sold, and the farmers should be provided with fair market access.
The Chief Minister told Palekar that every home in Andhra Pradesh will be provided internet through the establishment of the Fiber Grid Project.
Once this technology is in place, he requested Palekar to conduct video-conferences as a platform for knowledge-sharing. The Chief Minister responded positively to Palekar's suggestion to set up a bio-gas plant in every village in the state.
