ZBNF-Naisargik subhash palekar Zero budget sheti

ZBNF-subhash palekar Zero budget Natural farming Naisargik sheti Japan technology

Subhash PAlekars

Subhash Palekar is an Indian agriculturist who practiced and wrote many books about Subhash Palekar Natural Farming Formerly ZBNF. Subhash Palekar was born in 1949 in a small village Belora in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra in India, and he has an agricultural background.

Natural farming is an ecological farming approach established by Masanobu Fukuoka, a Japanese farmer and philosopher, introduced in his 1975 book The One-Straw Revolution. Fukuoka described his

The system works along with the natural biodiversity of each farmed area, encouraging the complexity of living organisms—both plant and animal—that shape each particular ecosystem to thrive along with food plants.[2] Fukuoka saw farming both as a means of producing food and as an aesthetic or spiritual approach to life, the ultimate goal of which was, "the cultivation and perfection of human beings".[3][4] He suggested that farmers could benefit from closely observing local conditions.[5] Natural farming is a closed system, one that demands no human-supplied inputs and mimics nature.[6]

What is Natural Farming?

Natural Farming is a farming practice that imitate the way of nature. It can be interpreted in many ways and sometimes people misinterpret the notion of Natural Farming since the word “Natural” is used so casually in many places.Natural Farming is to do nothing…

Basis of natural farming is to do nothing. When you are doing nothing, that is nature at work. Doing nothing does not necessarily mean that you do no work at all. It is to remove all the human prejudice from farming and leave it to nature. It almost appears Zen meditation to be one with nature. Natural farming involves NO TILL, NO WEEDING, NO PESTICIDE, NO FERTILIZER.

Natural Farming is developed in Japan primarily by Masanobu Fukuoka and Mokichi Okada.

Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) is a set of farming methods, and also a grassroots peasant movement, which has spread to various states in India. It has attained wide success in southern India, especially the southern Indian state of Karnataka where it first evolved. The movement in Karnataka state was born out of collaboration between Mr Subhash Palekar, who put together the ZBNF practices, and the state farmers association Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS), a member of La Via Campesina (LVC).

The neoliberalization of the Indian economy led to a deep agrarian crisis that is making small scale farming an unviable vocation. Privatized seeds, inputs, and markets are inaccessible and expensive for peasants. Indian farmers increasingly find themselves in a vicious cycle of debt, because of the high production costs, high interest rates for credit, the volatile market prices of crops, the rising costs of fossil fuel based inputs, and private seeds. Debt is a problem for farmers of all sizes in India. Under such conditions, ‘zero budget’ farming promises to end a reliance on loans and drastically cut production costs, ending the debt cycle for desperate farmers. The word ‘budget’ refers to credit and expenses, thus the phrase 'Zero Budget' means without using any credit, and without spending any money on purchased inputs. 'Natural farming' means farming with Nature and without chemicals.

Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) is a set of farming methods, and also a grassroots peasant movement, which has spread to various states in India. It has attained wide success in southern India, especially the southern Indian state of Karnataka where it first evolved. The movement in Karnataka state was born out of collaboration between Mr Subhash Palekar, who put together the ZBNF practices, and the state farmers association Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS), a member of La Via Campesina (LVC).