Chandrababu Naidu mulls varsity for nature farming

Guntur: Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has announced that his government will establish a university for nature farming, where distance education courses will be offered to farmers to improve their knowledge on the subject.

The Chief Minister urged farmers to study distance education courses and do PhD and instructed the officials to prepare curriculum for the courses. He inaugurated 10-day training classes to farmers in raising crops under nature farming at the Bible Mission Grounds near ANU on Saturday in which the farmers across the state participated. Speaking on the occasion, Naidu said that when farmers will get knowledge about agriculture, countries all over the world will purchase organic food from AP farmers. He instructed officials to conduct online tests to farmers during the 10 days training camp through cell phones and give grades to them based on their marks.

He said: “When farmers in the state started nature farming, the world began looking at us. AP Nature Farming should be a gift to the world to solve crisis in agriculture. I got an opportunity to speak at the United Nations because of nature farming. It is an honour for farmers raising crops under nature farming. After starting nature farming, the consumption of pesticides and fertilizers has come down significantly in the state. Aim of the government is to shift 60 lakh farmers cultivating two crore acres of land to nature farming.

Software engineers who returned from the US, agricultural graduates and engineers have started nature farming. ITC came forward to spend Rs 150 crore on Nature Farming in the state under the Corporate Social Responsibility.” The Chief Minister directed the adviser to the government on nature farming P Vijaya Kumar to appoint a Chief Executive to provide marketing facilities for farmers and a technical expert to provide technology to the farmers.

Renowned nature farming agriculturist Dr Subhash Palekar said, “Zero Budget Nature Farming was good for maintaining ecological balance and to check the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.” He felt that there was a need to shift more farmers to the nature farming. In Karnataka about 25,000 farmers attended training classes on nature farming while in AP about 9000 farmers participated in the meeting. He urged the government and farmers to create awareness on nature farming to more farmers to shift to the nature farming.

Minister for Agriculture Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy said the government was giving top priority for nature farming and implementing recommendations of Vijaya Kumar. He urged the farmers who attended the meeting motivate another one hundred farmers to start nature farming. Minister for Civil Supplies Prattipati Pulla Rao, Minister for Social Welfare Nakka Anand Babu, Special Chief Secretary (Agriculture) B Rajasekahar, were among those who participated.