Fukuoka Method styled Zero-Budget Natural Farming (自然農法): Govt to help 10 million farmers adopt it
Union Budget 2023-24: Entirely different from Organic Faming, it is an ecological farming approach established by Masanobu Fukuoka (1913–2008). Later an Indian agriculturist & Padma Shri awardee Subhash Palekar promoted this concept in the mid-1990s.
NEW DELHI: The Union Budget 2023-24 announcements this time offered to facilitate 10 million farmers of India who would be adopting natural farming, also called Zero-Budget Natural Farming in the next three years. For this, 10,000 bio-input resource centres will be set up, creating a national-level distributed micro-fertiliser and pesticide manufacturing network, the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said while presenting the Budget on Wednesday.
The concept of Natural faming not only propagates farming without fertilizers and chemicals but it also is entirely different approach from the popular Organic farming. In organic farming, farmers use non-chemical fertilisers, bio-fertilisers and bio-pesticides that are sourced from outside. In natural farming, nothing that is off-field can be used. Everything, including cow dung and urine formulations/cultures, has to come from within the same farm. Thus ending dependency on external inputs as soil is made to fetch the necessary nutrients from nature alone for maintaining the level of microbs (micro-organism) reducing the input cost and raising the profitability quotient for the farmers.
Very few, however, know about the fact that the concept of natural faming originated in Japan where it is called Fukuoka Method, “the natural way of farming” or “do-nothing farming”. A Japanese farmer and philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka (1913–2008) coined this term in his book “The One-Straw Revolution” in 1975.
The Budget announcement thus has paved a way for Japanese agriculturists and agri-scientists to look towards India and collaborate with Indian institutions working in the field of Natural Farming to further promote the concept.
“The 5-principle approach including No tillage, No fertilizer, No pesticides or herbicides, No weeding, and No pruning by Masanobu Fukuoka maintain that it is not a technique but a view, or a way of seeing ourselves as a part of nature, rather than separate from or above it. Accordingly, the methods themselves vary widely depending on culture and local conditions,” said Dr. Hari Om, State Training Advisor (Natural farming), Prakartik Krishi Farm, Gurukul Kurukshetra, Kurukshetra (Haryana).
Led by Governor of Gujarat Acharya Devvrat, Gurukul Kurukshetra has been working on the revolutionary concept of Natural farming since the year 2014 when Indian agriculturist & Padma Shri awardee Subhash Palekar visited this institution. Acharya Devvrat is the patron of the Gurukul Kurukshetra.
The Indian government has been promoting the concept of fertilizer-free farming for the past many years under the dedicated scheme of Paramparagat KrishiVikas Yojana (PKVY) which encourages all kinds of chemical-free farming systems including Zero Budget Natural Farming. But it used the term organic farming. However, it is for the first time, the Indian government’s union budget mentioned Natural Farming in the totality, without mentioning about Organic Farming, which is not zero-budget natural faming.
Earlier in 2022 also in her budget speech, Sitharaman had said that chemical-free farming will be promoted throughout the country, starting with fields within a 5-km wide corridor along the Ganga River. Further, states would be encouraged to revise the syllabi of agricultural universities “to meet the needs of natural, zero-budget and organic farming, modern-day agriculture, value addition and management”.
