In this article, we will try to understand how to start Zero Budget Natural Farming in India.
Zero Budget Natural Farming has two meaning in India.
- Pure zero budget - no input to the land
- Home made natural fertilizer or materials
Now, lets try to understand these two types of Natural Farming in India.
Pure Zero Budget Natural Farming or Natural Farming
In this type of farming practices, no input from outside is given to the land. Let me try to explain how it works.
Suppose that you have bought a land, the first requirement is to fence the land so that pet animals or others do not enter into your area. This is beneficial as the grasses that grows and recycle into your land makes a natural fertilizer.
What if my land was used for Chemical farming, can I do natural farming?
Yes, you can. The only problem is that first 3 years you may not get good yield. So ideally what you should be doing is to let the green cover up your land as much as they can. Do not cut the grasses. Let it make a small forest. The more trees or grasses will be there, the more birds, flies and other insects will come and deposit natural fertilizer in your farm land. These grasses will come and go and will recycle and make your land more porous that put carbon into it. These grasses helps your land to grasp more water and creates a natural environment to increase the earth worm counts.
The more earth worms, the more better it is for your land.
In the initial years, spread as much as you can seeds of different kinds and species. Be it be fruits or vegetables, or pulses or anything. Let some of them grow and some not. Create a very good environment for the birds and flies. In small area, wherever you feel comfortable plant some vegetables for your own consumption.
Use mulching of the grasses around on top to ensure that water is not getting evaporated or save the seeds from bird eating.
One such farm that is pure Natural Farming is http://rishikheti.blogspot.in/, visit this website for more details. The owner of this farm is Mr. Raju Titus who is very famous in India and very co-operative.
Zero Budget Natural/Spiritual Farming
This type of farming is done with the help of cow (ingenious) urine and dung and this was primarily promoted by Mr. Subhash Palekar, however some of this is the traditional Indian farming practices that was being practices originally.
Mr. Subhash Palekar suggested some mixture of cow dung, urine, jaggery, butter milk and all other materials that are either available in home or villages free of cost or in very less cost or can be get from a Indian cow.
The four foundation of Zero Budget Spiritual Farming is below
- Bijamitra - This primarily is the mixture of cow dung, urine and water and used to treat the seeds before sowing.
- Jiwamitra - This is the mixture of cow dung, urine, jaggery, pulse floor and soil from bund. This is primarily used to spread on the land to expedite the process of earth worm generations.
- Mulching - This is basically a cover of dried materials from your farm or green unused materials from your farm like grasses.
- Waapasha - is a technique of poring water into the trees. This is basically done at the edge of the tree shade at 12.00 PM afternoon.
To overcome the Pest and Insects, following are used
- Agniastra - This primarily is the mixture of Chilli, Garlic, Neem and cow urine (all available in house or locally) and used to control the insects.
- Bramhastra - This is again the mixture of several locally available plants like Neem, Guava, Custard Apple, Pomogranate etc. with cow urine and is used to spray over the leaves of the plant.
- Neemastra - This is also the mixture of cow dung, urine, neem etc. and used for leave sucking insects.
All the details of above fertilizer, pest control mixture have been well explained in
Mr. Subhash Palekar website.
Mr. Subhash Palekar, also takes workshops and you can attend them to get better exposure.
To watch these workshops video online, you can go through the post of Videos section of this website and go through Video - Zero Budget Natural Farming by Subash Palekar Part 1 to 11.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for reading.
Do write your feedback or comments.
Tags: Zero Budget Natural Farming, ZBNF, ZBSF