Farmer's Weekly (South Africa)
Indian farmers return to ‘natural’ farming methods
The farming community in Andhra Pradesh has been making headlines for ‘natural’ farming, which the farmers hope will help them protect their crops from weather disasters.
According to India’s Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, the area had been hit by a cyclone in December, which brought heavy rainfall and resulted in farms being flooded.
The government said at the time that about 243 000ha of crops had been destroyed.
In a recent statement, the ministry said that climate disasters were one of the reasons why farmers in the region had opted to practise natural farming methods.
Natural farming was an old-age process that many farmers around the world practised in the past as an alternative to using fertilisers and chemicals on their fields.
On the Andhra Pradesh farms, a concoction of cow urine, unrefined sugar and other organic materials, which act as a form of natural fertiliser, was being used.
The ministry said that these materials acted as barriers against bad weather by helping the soil retain more water and ensuring that plant roots could reach deeper into the soil, protecting them against strong winds and other weather disasters.
According to farmers in the area using these methods, rainwater ‘seeped’ into the soil after recent heavy rain instead of flooding the fields.
The ministry said that local and federal government had assisted close to 700 000 farmers shift to natural farming.
The ministry also reported that it had invested over US$8Ȳmillion (about R147 million) towards natural farming with the aim of launching this technique on all farms across India.
It noted that using fertilisers and pesticides was cheaper, and thus more support would be needed to get farmers to embrace natural farming. –