According to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the time has come to correct the wrong farming practices before the problems of the agriculture sector become worse.
Addressing a conference on natural farming in Gujarat on Thursday, Mr Modi urged farmers to replace the chemical fertilizers and pesticides that fueled the Green Revolution with concoctions made from indigenous cow dung and urine, which ” completely science based”. Shift from the laboratory of chemistry to the laboratory of nature.
He said that small and marginal farmers, who own less than two acres of land and who constitute 80% of the country’s farming population, have benefited the most from natural farming techniques as they are currently forced to spend large sums of money on costly fertilisers. are forced to.
Calling for a mass movement to promote natural farming, he said that reducing the import bill of artificial fertilizers was a necessary step towards achieving the goal of self-reliant India or self-reliant India. This comes at a time when farmers in some parts of the country have been complaining of shortage of fertilizer during the crucial winter sowing season.
New priority for the center
Mr Modi’s speech, which was broadcast by the Agriculture Ministry to eight crore farmers across the country, is the government’s latest effort to promote zero budget natural farming techniques. Home Minister Amit Shah and Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar were both present at the conference in Anand, Gujarat, indicating that the subject is a new priority for the Centre, now that its key agricultural reform laws have been repealed.. It is still waiting for any large-scale scientific study to assess the long-term impact of such techniques on productivity, farm income and food security, the ministry says, adding that the experience of millions of farmers has demonstrated the method’s success. .
Mr Modi said, “The illusion has been created that without chemicals the crop will not be good. Whereas the truth is quite the opposite. There were no chemicals before, but the harvest was good. The history of the development of humanity is a witness to this. Before the problems related to agriculture become worse, it is the right time to take big steps before that. We have to connect our agriculture with the laboratory of nature by taking it out of the laboratory of chemistry. When I talk about nature’s lab, it’s completely science-based.”
The Prime Minister cited ancient literature in Hindi, Gujarati and Tamil to support natural farming practices and urged agricultural scientists to use it as a basis for new research. “We need not only to re-learn this ancient knowledge of agriculture, but also to sharpen it for modern times. In this direction we have to do new research, mold the ancient knowledge into the modern scientific framework. In this direction, institutions like our ICAR, Krishi Vigyan Kendra and Agricultural University can play a big role. We don’t have to limit the information to research papers and theories only, we have to convert it into practical breakthroughs.”
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