BENGALURU: Agriculture expert and advocate of natural farming, not organic, Subash Palekar on Monday gave the government of Karnataka a 90-minute lecture on how to increase the base for natural farming and help ryots earn more.

“The government of India has been making statements of doubling the farmers income. But the only sure way of doing that is not by chemical based or organic farming, it is by natural farming and using ancient practice cow dung manure,” said Palekar.

Author of Zero budget natural farming, which has been widely circulated across the nation in different languages and even in certain countries abroad, Palekar said green revolution in India has proved detrimental to the nation.

“Green revolution does not have any solutions to the farmers problems and has, in fact, increased them. It has provided useless technology that is hurting the environment, farmers and even consumers. The prime reason for increased farmer suicides has been due to the largescale increase in chemicals and fertilizers,” said Palekar.

He said, to practice natural farming, it only required 10 kilos of cow dung per acre.

“Perhaps, the only investment which will be required from the government of Karnataka is to procure local cows from other regions and provide it for every acre of farmland,” he said.

Palekar suggested that the government of Karnataka must take up the zero budget farming on a pilot basis in one village of each of the 745 hoblis.

“After the pilot project takes off, the government can initiate the same as part of their farming policy,” he said.

Responding to this, Kumaraswamy after Palekar’s talk, said: “I made all you DCs and CEOs to wait and patiently listen to one and half hours of Palekar’s talk so as to ensure that every one of you officials contributes towards zero budget farming and help increase our productivity.”

The government is considering to implement zero budget natural farming in drylands of north Karnataka.

