The soil health in Anantapur district is in the worst possible state due to abuse in the past and at present there is a ‘microbial biomass carbon emergency’ situation, which is leading to desertification.
The World Agroforestry Centre Deputy Director-General Research Ravi Prabhu and lead scientist Soil Health Leigh Winowiecki during the international workshop on ‘Reversing Desertification and Climate Resilient Natural Farming Landscapes,’ said the soil samples collected from various regions of the district over a period of six months show there was only 5 grams of carbon against a threshold level of 20 grams per kilogram of soil, which was very alarming.
Terming it ‘Biomass Carbon Emergency,’ the experts, who have been working for the past one decade on reversing desertification in Kenya, said Biomass Carbon was a measure of the carbon contained within the living component of soil organic matter.
Microbes decompose soil organic matter releasing carbon dioxide and plant available nutrients. These qualities were killed by the overuse of fertilizers, encouraging mono cropping and not allowing the biomass to decompose in the soil leading to rise in soil temperatures and moisture retention capacity coming down drastically, AF Ecology Centre Director Y.V. Malla Reddy said. This team of experts will meet Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy in a day or two to put forth their proposals on creating an 800 km stretch of agriculture landscape in the State, which would be self-sustaining through natural farming.
Natural farming
The concept of Zero-Based Natural Farming had to be further fine-tuned by taking a landscape approach, so that all kinds of trees are grown and there were financial gains for the farmers to switch from fertilizer/pesticide intensive farming to natural farming and help reverse desertification, Mr. Ravi Prabhu said.
The four-day conference concluded on Tuesday with inputs discussed with stakeholders from the field visit to Yerragoretipalli in Kundurpi mandal on Monday.
