Dr. Poonam Malakondaiah, Special Chief Secretary and Principal Secretary, Department of Agriculture, Government of Andhra Pradesh will be addressing the august offline as well as online gathering of eminent personalities attached to food and agri industry at the one-day seminar: Sustainable Agriculture and India towards Total Food Security being organised by the World Food Trust at New Delhi.
Dr Poonam Malakondaiah, IAS,
Dr Poonam Malakondaiah spearheads Andhra Pradesh government’s Department of Agriculture’s ambitious scale-out plan to transition 6 million farms/farmers to 100% chemical-free agriculture by 2024. A good percentage of this has already been covered.
This is an unprecedented transformation towards sustainable agriculture at such a massive scale.
ZNBF also aims to create the human and social capital necessary for vibrant and inclusive agricultural production.
The program is a contribution towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals, focusing on ‘No Poverty’, ‘Clean Water and Sanitation’, ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’, and ‘Life on Land’.
Zero budget natural farming (ZBNF) is a method of chemical-free agriculture drawing from traditional Indian practices.
Dr Poonam Malakondaiah, IAS,
It was originally promoted by Maharashtrian agriculturist and Padma Shri recipient Subhash Palekar, who developed it in the mid-1990s as an alternative to the Green Revolution’s methods driven by chemical fertilizers and pesticides and intensive irrigation. He argued that the rising cost of these external inputs was a leading cause of indebtedness and suicide among farmers, while the impact of chemicals on the environment and on long-term fertility was devastating. Without the need to spend money on these inputs — or take loans to buy them — the cost of production could be reduced and farming made into a “zero budget” exercise, breaking the debt cycle for many small farmers.
The Andhra Pradesh government is showing true leadership in transitioning one of India’s first “Green Revolution” states into one of India’s first natural farming states. Considering its impressive scale, an effective shift to a 100 percent natural farming state with 8 million hectares free of chemical contamination will achieve transformative impacts in India. In addition, it will provide a blueprint for an inclusive agricultural model, which takes into account diversity of people along with agro-climatic conditions and can be adapted to varying global contexts to reduce vulnerabilities to climate change.
World Food Trust is confident that the efforts of Department of Agriculture, Government of Andhra Pradesh will set the pace and the agenda for the rest of the country to emulate.
