The Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) programme in Andhra Pradesh can help six million farm families in the state and make significant progress towards the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), said an independent study.
The study, by non-profit Council on Energy, Environment and Water, was released on Thursday by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Erik Solheim here, as per a release.
The study maps potential social, economic, and environmental impacts of the ZBNF programme in relation to the specific targets under each of the SDGs.
"By adopting the natural farming practices, ZBNF farmers in Andhra Pradesh have eliminated the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
Instead they use low-cost locally-sourced natural concoctions, inoculums and decoctions based on cow dung, cow urine, jaggery, lilac, green chillies and many other such natural ingredients, said the release.
"The ZBNF programme would generate millions of rural employment opportunities across the agricultural value chain including the production, distribution, retail of natural mixtures and market linkages for ZBNF produce," the release quoted Naidu as saying.
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Solheim said there was need to design sustainable agriculture and forestry to solve the climate crisis, rather than contributing to it.
"Right now, more than 30 per cent of the climate crisis could be solved through sustainable land use, yet less than three per cent of climate finance, public or private, goes towards it," the release quoted Solheim as saying.
He sought a ten-fold increase in climate finance for sustainable land use and agriculture.
--IANS
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