A Testimony From The Father Of The Green Revolution

In the past 5 or 6 odd years, you must have definitely heard of the cases of farmers running into heavy debts and being driven to resort to extreme measure like even suicide after being unable to get out of debt. The government has been grappling with this problem and thinking of how to deal with it effectively. And much has been written or said about it.

One solution to the problem involves seeing the wisdom in our traditional ways of farming, and changing the farmer’s situation by going back to nature to seek help. As always, nature hasn’t turned down this request and been generous enough to help.

As part of an experiment called Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA) launched by Ministry of Rural Development in Andhra Pradesh, traditional farming practices are being revived and re-implemented to see if they are relevant even today. For example, farmers use Ghanajivaamrit, a mixture of cow dung, cow urine, jaggery, gram flour as fertilizer and microbes-rich clay for farming. That brings the cost down and also enriches the soil that has degraded over many years through the use and overuse of pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

Image Credit: http://www.organic-europe.net

The CMSA model involves a community approach to agriculture and an effort to make agriculture include the social aspect in addition to the economic aspect of the farmer’s life. Symbiosis with nature is employed to reduce artificial costs; for instance, by understanding the natural bug/pest lifecycle, the need for pesticides is minimized since the crops are planned accordingly.

And it is no surprise that the profit earned per hectare has, indeed, gone up dramatically after these practices were put to use. In fact, the father of the Green Revolution, MS Swaminathan, calls this next era and this awareness the Evergreen Revolution! And there we have the most authentic testimony one can get for what ProNature has always believed in – Back To Nature is the most effective way Back To The Future.

Read the original Forbes article on the topic at this link.