Zero Budget Natural Farming in India: Aiming Back to the Basics

Abstract

Crisis of Indian agriculture is very pertinent at this moment as green revolution is gradually losing its hope. Excessive, pointless exploitation of broods of green revolution has left bad footprints on country’s food security and environmental safety. With the motto to ensure food security by reviving Indian agriculture in environmentally safe way as well as to release farmers from debt cycle and suicides, zero budget natural farming (ZBNF) has come in the picture, which discards uses of all the chemical farming inputs and relies on natural way of farming i.e. rejuvenating soil and crop health through its own practices (Jivamrita, Bijamrita, mulching, soil aeration, intercropping, crop diversification, bunds, bio-pesticides etc.). ZBNF movement right now is the most popular agrarian movement which begun in 2002 in Karnataka and later successfully spread in many states (specially, of South India) of the nation through numbers of trainings, demonstrations and various promotional activities. Successful outcomes from farmers’ fields of south Indian states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka etc. are encouraging and grabbing attention of farmers, public and private organisations towards ZBNF in recent times. Yet, various controversies regarding its transparency, inadequate information, efficacy, practices, idealisms, even the term ‘zero budget’ etc. have agglutinated around ZBNF over the years since it debuted. Critics in fact have cited several references of drastic yield reductions with ZBNF practices in many places. Adequate scientific evaluation or monitoring of ZBNF’s successes or failures through multi-locational trials is now therefore the needful before allowing or restraining its run in Indian agriculture.

Natural farming improves crop yield in SE India when compared to conventional or organic systems by enhancing soil quality

“…The principle put forward in the workshop discussion was that, with appropriate microbial addition in ZBNF, yields can be maintained without addition of fertiliser. It is claimed that all the nutrients a crop needs are already present in the soil, and application of beneficial microorganisms present in Jiwamrita catalyses the transformation of nutrients locked up in the soil into plant-available forms (Biswas 2020 ; Keerthi et al 2018 ; Korav et al 2020 ). Both the solid and liquid Jiwamrita are intended to act as a microbial inoculant, increasing soil biodiversity and acting as a plant ‘biostimulant’.…”

“…Anecdotal evidence, therefore, needs to be supported by controlled, replicated field trials (Smith et al 2020 ). ZBNF performance also seems to vary in different locations (Biswas 2020 ) so experiments need to be conducted across the range of contexts where ZBNF is targeted. Initial work in controlled field experiments for a single season in Andhra Pradesh suggested that converting to ZBNF practices does not result in a yield penalty when compared to organic and conventional alternatives (Duddigan et al 2022 ).…”

Manure management and soil biodiversity: Towards more sustainable food systems in the EU

“…In ancient traditional knowledge systems in India (Biswas, 2020;Randhawa and Kullar, 2011), Europe (Bogaard et al, 2013;Krausmann, 2004) and South America (Birk et al, 2011), manure has been used as a main organic fertiliser or even as an ingredient for biostimulants. Traditional methods emphasise (i) quality of manure (e.g., source, including feed of the animal whose manure is used), (ii) method used for its treatment, including proportions of various ingredients used for such treatment and (iii) its management, i.e., the duration for which it can be stored, the amount to be used, and time/frequency of application.…”

Kunapajala: A Traditional Organic Formulation for Improving Agricultural Productivity: A Review

“…As population growth gradually occurred, it failed to sustain and chemical based agriculture took its place through green revolution (Biswas and Das, 2022). However, setback in crop production due to continuous application of chemicals has become prominent from 1990 onwards and Indian agriculture is showing paradigm shift again towards organic agriculture to an extent (Biswas, 2020). Organic agriculture maintains biodiversity, biological cycle and its proper interaction with environment.…”