A cursory mention of Zero Budget Farming (ZBF) in Friday’s Budget speech by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has kindled the hopes of people who bet on sustainable agriculture.

This method, which has a few variants calls for farming with locally available resources and low on carbon, energy, water and chemical use.

ZBF practitioners, however, are not excited as the Finance Minister has not allocated funds nor provided any policy direction to roll out the natural farming method.

“We need to replicate this innovative model through which in a few States farmers are already being trained in this practice. Steps such as this can help in doubling our farmers’ income in time for our 75th year of Independence,” the Finance Minister said.

However, the lack of allocation has left stakeholders in the sustainable agriculture space disappointed. As the Minister observed, ZBF is not something new. Several individuals and State governments have been doing pilots here and there to promote this environmentally sustainable farming method.

Andhra Pradesh is one State that wanted to convert fully to Zero Budget Farming with former Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu giving it a big policy push. He gave a presentation to global leaders on ZBF natural farming at Davos and at a meeting convened by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It came out with a government order in 2016 that sought to implement ZBF in 291 clusters across 13 districts, covering five lakh farm families in five years. It wanted to cover 5,000 such clusters by 2024, covering 60 lakh farmers.

Minimal harm to nature

Subhash Palekar, a key proponent of ZBF, lays emphasis on the marriage of dairy with farming. He believes in causing minimal harm to nature, while practising agriculture.

Cow dung and urine are at the heart of his ZBF formula, which, he argues, would give us food sans pesticide residues. Its main ingredients are Bijamrit, Jeevamrit, solid jeevamrit — made of cow dung and urine — which will provide essential nutrients. They will also protect the crop from pests and insects.

The Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA), which also advocates chemical-free agriculture, said ZBF was all about using locally available resources. “It is basically an agro-ecological method, using low carbon, low energy, low water and low chemicals,” says GV Ramanjaneyulu, Chief Executive Officer.

Following these methods would help the local ecology and help fix carbon in the soils.

He, however, expressed his disappointment over non allocation of funds in the Budget for ZBF. “We need to wait and see how the government wants to roll this out. Without budgetary allocation, it would take us nowhere,” he pointed out.

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