The State government on Saturday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Sustainable India Finance Facility (SIFF) to promote Zero Based Natural Farming (ZNBF) in a huge way, covering six million farmers in the next five years.
The SIFF, a conglomeration of organisations such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment); the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF); and the BNP Paribas, aims to bring long-term finance to projects and companies that stimulate green growth, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and improve livelihoods of the marginalised communities.
Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu signed the MoU with SIFF chairperson Satya S. Tripathi, in the presence of Executive Director, UN Environment Programme, Erik Solheim, at the ZBNF scale out programme organised on the ground opposite Acharya Nagarjuna University.
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Negative growth
“A.P. has created history today. Soon, it will become the largest practitioner of natural farming, which is the panacea for the problems besetting the agricultural sector that has been witnessing negative growth in the last few years. I want the State to be declared as a natural farming destination by the year 2024,” Mr. Naidu said.
“Some of the ill-effects of green revolution are indiscriminate use of fertilizers and pesticides to produce more. As a result, the soil has been degraded. Farmers are forced to bear the brunt of the vagaries of nature. Rising input costs have made farming a risky proposition. Natural farming has emerged as the only solution to all the problems,” he said.
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Batting for extensive use of IT in agriculture, Mr. Naidu said details of the farmers, best practices in natural farming, and yield would be documented using IT.
“Funds are not a constraint as the estimated requirement in the next five years is ₹16,000 crore. We are confident of support from the international lending agencies,” Mr. Naidu said.
P. Vijaya Kumar , adviser, Government of A.P., said ZBNF had been initiated in September 2015, and taken up at the field level during kharif 2016. In the last two years, it had grown rapidly and, in 2018, 1.60 lakh farmers in 972 villages were into ZBNF in 63,000 hectares, he said.
In 2018-19, the programme will cover 5 lakh farmers in 1.25 lakh hectares in 3,000 villages of the State.
Global challenge
Mr. Erik Solheim said ecology-centric approach was critical for achieving food security and meeting the needs of a global population of 9.7 billion by 2050.
The decrease in arable land and unpredictable weather patterns make farming a difficult exercise, and ZBNF was a solution for this global challenge.
Subhash Palekar, a pioneer in ZBNF, sent a video message from his home as he was unwell.
Ananth Padmanabhan, CEO, Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives; Pavan Sukhdev, president, WWF International, Geneva; Antoine Sire, Member of the Board, BNP Paribas, Paris; Sunny Verghese, Chair, World Business Council on Sustainable Development, Singapore; and Kuntoro Mangkusbroto, former Minister, Republic of Indonesia, and Chairman, Tropical Landscapes Finance Facility, Jakarta, spoke.