Zero-budget farming raises income, but is labour-intensive, finds study

Crop yield of over 90 per cent of farmers increased after they adopted Zero-budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), but an overwhelming majority of them (around 87 per cent) could not get better price for their produce, a study has found.

The requirement of manual labour under the system increased and so did the time consumed, according to the study, which was conducted by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

The study, conducted in June 2019 on the basis of focus group discussions among 142 farmers, along with in-depth interviews with 40 farmers from 35 villages in 10 districts of Andhra Pradesh, was released on Tuesday by NITI

Aayog Vice-chairman Rajiv Kumar. It was part of a report called ‘State of Organic and Natural Farming in India – Challenges and Possibilities’.

About 70 per cent of the farmers who participated in the study had over three years of ZBNF farming experience and 85 per cent were practising ZBNF on entire holding, the study noted. Climate-resistant ZBNF is a method of farming wherein all critical inputs are gathered from the field and nothing is introduced from outside.

ZBNF gained popularity when the Economic Survey of 2018 advocated it as a lucrative livelihood option for small farmers. The next day, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman mentioned it in her Budget speech as an innovative model via which farmers’ income could be doubled by 2022.

The CSE study found that almost 90 per cent of those interviewed felt net incomes from ZBNF farms increased as compared to NON-ZBNF farms, though there was no premium attached to their produce as production cost went down.

Farmers said they experienced a decline in yield for crops in the initial seasons of transition from chemical farming to ZBNF. However, in the subsequent seasons it either matched yield from chemical farming or was higher by 5–350 per cent in two-thirds of plots.