Natural farming practices wow Mexican team

Tirupati: The visiting Mexican delegation was impressed by the way natural farming activity is being taken up in Tirupati district. Area director from the Government of Mexico Maria Natividad Diaz commented, “Here, the people doing it by themselves whereas we are using technicians in Mexico. It was amazing that scientists are emerging out of the farming community, the concept of creating farmer scientists in the APCNF programme is also amazing.”

She said that the members of the Mexican delegation to the natural farming fields in Tirupati district during the last three days have learned a lot.

The delegation led by Maria Diaz took part in the preparation and sowing of A Grade groundnut and ATM models (Any Time Money) in the fields of C Nagaraj in Gollapalli village of Ramachandrapuram Mandal.

They participated in the implementation of natural farming practices by sowing bajra, jowar and maize as border crops in his fields. Nagaraju has been practising natural farming since 2017 in 2.5 acre land and is associated with APCNF to scale up the natural farming in and around his village.

The delegates interacted with the community cadre of APCNF and interns who are learning the concept of natural farming under internship and discussed the implementation of APCNF in the agriculture fields of TV Saparlu village, Kotha Kandriga panchayat limits. They learned about the HN (Health and Nutrition) interventions being implemented by APCNF.

As a part of homestead food production intervention, the target group of adolescent girls households are grounding the Surya Mandal Models in two cents of land where 18 to 20 varieties of vegetables, leafy vegetables and fruits being produced for their own consumption and the surplus is being supplied to the Anganwadi centres after an MoU with the centres.

C Chandrasekhar, Smita Jacob, K Suresh Babu, Dr Raj Gopal from RySS and APCNF district project manager Shanmugam accompanied the Mexican delegation.