State to produce quality natural food, says Chandrababu Naidu

Guntur: AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu announced that the state would be turned into a producer of quality natural food. Every acre of land would be converted into zero-based nature farming (ZBNF) by restraining the use of chemicals, urea and fertilisers.

Mr Naidu was speaking after sigining memorandum of understanding between the AP government and Sustainable India Finance Facility (SIFF) of the United Nations Environment Programme to bring awareness about nature farming among farmers during a two-day training programme on ZBNF.

The final session of the programme was held on Bible Mission ground. Mr Naidu announced that 1.63 lakh farmers had turned to ZBNF in 13 districts and the government is targeting switching of 5 lakh farmers this year and 60 lakh farmers by 2024.

He said the AP government was spending Rs 16,000 crore on ZBNF awareness among farmers. The government had declared 2018 as the year of nature farming, he said. Mr Naidu claimed that nature farming experiment was going on on a large scale only in AP. He said that eating food produced with the help of pesticides, urea and chemicals was not good for the health and longevity, and people were turning towards healthy food produced naturally. ZBNF was the only answer to produce quality food crops and earning good income, he said.

The Chief Minister said that the national average growth in agriculture was three per cent but it stood at 18 per cent in AP. This was due to modern methods used in the state with the help of technology.

Mr Naidu stated information technology would be used for producing quality natural crops and AP would become model for the world for nature farming. He predicted that technology would tell consumers about the details of food they were eating instantly.

 with the linking of IT to cultivation.

Mr Naidu appealed farmers to turn to ZBNF for good quality producs and good incomes and to help AP to achieve top place in ZBNF among the world.

UN resident coordinator for India Yuri Afanasiev, SIFFI chairperson Satya S. Tripathi, Ananth Padmanabhan, CEO of Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives, UNEP executive director Erik Solheim and others addressed the gathering.