We Are In The Midst Of A Crisis. But Innovation And Mother Nature Offer A Solution Started in 2014 by the Government of Andhra Pradesh, Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS) is a non-profit dedicated to enhancing farmer and consumer welfare and conserving the environment.
By Kabir Singh Bhandari •
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Started in 2014 by the Government of Andhra Pradesh, Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS) is a non-profit dedicated to enhancing farmer and consumer welfare and conserving the environment. With the objective of reaching 6 million farmers and convert 8 million hectares of its land in Andhra Pradesh into natural farming fields, they were one of the winners at the 9th edition of the Marico Innovation Awards, during which RySS Vice-Chairman, Vijay Kumar Thallam spoke about the sense of urgency with which they do their work.
"We are in a very serious crisis, an existential crisis. In fact, there are multiple crises- that of food production, farmers, livelihoods, consumption, food safety, and nutrient integrity of food. Then we have the environment- with losses in soil, water problems, biodiversity global warming, ultimately leading to a climate emergency. All these are interrelated, and they threaten our food production, but at the same time, the way we produce food is the major cause of these crises, and that is the irony. There's only one solution to this issue- mimicking Mother Nature in farming," Thallam opened his speech by saying.
According to him, mimicking Mother Nature in farming is the solution for these multiple emergencies which present themselves in front of us in today's world. It is imperative to move from the present cycle of destructive farming to regenerative farming. The problem in implementing this is not the knowledge of how to do so, which is available, but of taking this to every farmer and staying with each of them till the transformation is completed- a daunting challenge.
But this is also something which RySS has made great progress in and Thallam went on share the nine principles that are essential to natural farming technology.
"Worldwide, only 1 per cent farmers are practicing this transformative agriculture. Through RySS we have gone from enabling 1 per cent to 10 per cent farmers in Andhra Pradesh in six years. 6,00,000 farmers in Andhra Pradesh are on this journey of transformation. Let me share with you the principles behind natural farming technology.
- The first is that every field should be covered with crops throughout the year. We call it 365 days green cover.
- There should be crop diversity.
- We should not disturb the soils with plumbing and soil should not be bare.
- Farmers should own seeds.
- Indigenous seeds should be used.
- Integration of animals with farming is important.
- Use of bio stimulants, which is our traditional agriculture from cow dung, cow urine and natural products.
- Use of bio pesticides for pest management
- And the ninth principle is a negative list. No synthetic chemicals, no fertilizers, no pesticides, no herbicides," he said, listing out all the points.
These are very simple nature mimicking practices, but with a tremendous science behind which contain significant healing power. The innovation of RySS has been taking this knowledge to lakhs of farmers in a relatively short span of time and deal with them throughout this transformation, and it seems they're purposefully marching forward in their aim to promote climate resilient, chemical free, ecological agriculture across all agro climatic zones; along with providing small and marginal farmers with profitable livelihoods from agriculture.
