Natural farming can be the best solution for farmers and our economy: Acharya Devvrat

Dignitaries present at the inaugural function of the 14th Agrovision Left to Right) Ramesh Mankar, Organising Secretary, Agrovision; Ravindra Boratkar, Organising Secretary, Agrovision and Publisher of AgroSpectrum, Rajnikant Shroff, Chairman, UPL, Dr C D Mayee, Chairman, Advisory committee, Agrovision, Acharya Dewvrat, Governor of Gujarat, Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister for Road, Transport and Highways and Chief Patron, Agrovision, Shrikant Vaidya, Chairman, Indian Oil Corporation Ltd IOCL) and Dr Meenesh Shah, Chairman Managing Director CMD), National Dairy Development Board NDDB).

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“Natural farming is the future and Indian farmers will be able to save a lot of expenditure on agriculture inputs if they give preference to natural farming over chemical and organic farming”, stated Acharya Devvrat, Governor of Gujarat, in his inaugural speech at the 14th Agrovision, the annual agricultural exhibition on November 24 at PDKV Ground in Nagpur.

Devvrat narrated his reasons for moving away from chemical farming to organic farming first and then adopting natural farming on the farmland of his five Gurukuls.

Elaborating on the insights gained from his own experiments and experiences, learning from experts, and reading research papers, he added, “I finally came to the conclusion that natural farming can be the best solution for the benefit of farmers as well as the economy as its input cost is very less and it is environment friendly and sustainable”.

In his address, Acharya Devvrat emphasised that natural farming is even better than organic since it generates less methane. In both chemical and organic farming, inputs are given from outside, but in natural farming, inputs from outside are not needed. 

 It works on a simple principle of how trees grow in forests without any outside inputs and still receive all nutrients without anyone feeding them. In the same way, the system is largely based on ‘on-farm biomass recycling’ with major stress on biomass mulching, use of on-farm cow dung-urine formulations, and maintaining soil aeration. It integrates crops, trees, and livestock with functional biodiversity. It is considered an agroecology-based diversified farming system.