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Himachal scaling up farming, nature's way
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SME Times News Bureau | 20 Aug, 2018
Himachal Pradesh, the country's fruit and off-season vegetable bowl, has
launched a scheme this year to scale up zero-budget natural farming, a
chemical-free method, with Governor Acharya Devvrat taking the lead to
sow the seeds of sustainability through nature's way.
The state
has adopted a zero-budget natural farming model, promoted by Padma Shri
Subhash Palekar from Maharashtra, for the first time with a budgetary
allocation of Rs 25 crore for this fiscal. The aim is to double the
income of farmers by 2020 as declared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Experts say input costs are minimal with no use of fertilisers and pesticides, resulting in high profits.
"Despite
the excessive use of chemical fertilisers, the overall production of
fruits, vegetables and cereals is declining even in the hill states,
including ours. This is clear indication that the fertility of the soil
is getting impaired," Devvrat told IANS.
Even the availability of water for irrigation in the state is not sufficient.
"So,
it's necessary to bring qualitative improvement in the total
agricultural system. This requires opting natural farming that will also
help rejuvenating the barren land and minimising the use of water," he
said.
Devvrat, who is raising "desi" or indigenous cows in his
palatial bungalow in the state capital, sees zero-budget natural farming
as a transformation towards sustainable agriculture, a better deal for
the farmers, consumers and also for the environment.
Devvrat
believes his experimentation in doing zero-budget natural farming on his
200-acre farm in Gurukul, a 106-year-old boarding school in Haryana's
Kurukshetra district, is a grand success by depending largely on
farm-raised indigenous cows.
He said as per data of Haryana
Agricultural University, Kurukshetra has minimum 30 per cent biological
carbon. Not even a single sample of the district was found where the
quantity of organic carbon is more than 0.75 per cent.
Impressed
with his advocacy to promote natural farming in the state, Prime
Minister Modi entrusted Devvrat the responsibility to expand it across
the country.
Himachal Pradesh, where agriculture is the mainstay
of people, providing direct employment to about 71 percent population,
has also initiated transformation towards sustainable agriculture on a
massive scale by promoting organic farming with 39,790 registered
farmers currently harvesting crops on 21,473 hectares.
Vegetable
grower Rajesh Thakur in Baghi village in Rohru subdivision of Shimla
district, who has been practising natural farming for the last more than
25 years, said it was difficult to convince the growers to go for
eco-friendly farming.
"The pea and capsicum crops are yielding a
good produce. They tasted deliciously compared to the crop grown by
using pesticides and of course command good prices too," he added.
However, farm experts say zero-budget natural farming is easier said than done.
"It's
practically not feasible on a commercial scale owing to its large
dependence on cow dung and urine, which are not currently available in
abundance with the change in farm practices across the country," said a
senior agricultural official, requesting anonymity.
"Such farming
can be done at the micro level. But again we have large subsistence
farming communities who cannot experiment with their livelihood," he
added.
Interestingly, farmers in the state's landlocked valleys
like Pangi in Chamba district and Dodra Kwar in Shimla district have
never used pesticides and fertilisers for growing crops.
Barring
Chamba and some interior areas in the state, the farmers have been
preferring domesticated hybrid varieties rather than the native ones due
to high milk yields.
The BJP-led Jai Ram Thakur government for
the first time initiated 'Prakritik Kheti Khushhaal Kisaan Yojana' to
promote zero-budget natural farming and the state aims to make it a zero
budget natural farming state by 2022.
As per the programme, the
natural farming is totally based on domestic cow breeds. Availability of
high yielding domestic cow breed germplasm would be ensured by the
state Animal Husbandry Department. Farmers will be provided incentives
for establishing infrastructure for the zero-budget natural farming
inputs.
To facilitate efficient collection of cow dung and urine,
essential inputs of natural farming, farmers would be provided 80 per
cent assistance for lining of cattle sheds and construction of urine
collection system.
In a first, Dr Y.S. Parmar University of
Horticulture and Forestry has successfully undertaken the harvesting of
peas planted under the zero budget natural farming.
The first picking of the peas was undertaken in March this year with encouraging results.
Based on the first harvest, the production was calculated to be around five quintals an acre.
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