Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday attended the Natural Farming Conclave in Surat through a video conference.
Speaking about development, PM Modi said, "In the amrit kaal, the sense of 'Sabka Prayaas' is the base for the speed of the country's development, which is guiding our journey of development. The responsibility for the work that is being done for the villages and poor has been given to citizens & gram panchayats," news agency ANI reported.
Addressing the conclave, PM Modi said, "On the occasion of 75 years of independence, the country has started working towards various goals that will become the base for big changes in the time to come."
"In the time to come, with your efforts & your experience, farmers across the country will learn & understand and a lot. The Natural Farming model that will emerge out of Surat, can become a model for the entire India," he further adds.
Highlighting Digital India Mission, PM Modi said, "The extraordinary success of the Digital India Mission is the country's reply to those people who used to say that it's not easy to bring change to villages...Our villages have shown that villages can not only bring changes but also lead the change."
Gujarat chief minister Bhupendra Patel and governor Acharya Devvrat also attended the conclave.
The conclave witnessed the participation of thousands of farmers and stakeholders in Surat have made the adoption of natural farming in Surat a success story.
Under the initiative, at least 75 farmers were identified in each gram panchayat and trained for natural farming. The farmers were trained in 90 different clusters resulting in the training of more than 41,000 farmers across the district, the PMO said.
What's Natural Farming?
Natural farming is a traditional indigenous livestock-based agricultural practice that puts an end to all kinds of externally purchased inputs like chemical fertilizer or pesticides as well as organic fertilizers like vermicompost, organic manure, biofertiliser, bio-pesticides with an aim to reduce the cost of farming thereby offering benefit mostly to small and marginal farmers. However, the transition to natural farming requires large-scale access to natural farming techniques as farmers shift from traditional fertiliser and pesticide-based systems to a system where no inorganic chemical is added to the farm.
The emphasis is laid on the exclusion of all synthetic chemical inputs and promoting on-farm biomass recycling with major stress on biomass mulching, use of cow dung-urine formulations, and other plant-based preparations.