The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Farmers urged to reduce input costs

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Sunday, Dec 30, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Farmers urged to reduce input costs

Staff Reporter

“Zero budget farming can make cultivation a profitable occupation”

Photo: M. Govarthan

Sharing his views: Subash Palekar, promoter of Zero Budget Farming concept, addressing participants at a training programme in Erode on Saturday. —

ERODE: If the right to life includes the right to access clean air, water and food, then the Green Revolution took away and continues to take away rights, Subash Palekar, promoter of the concept of Zero budget farming (ZBF) has said.

Addressing farmers at a four-day training programme on ZBF organised by the district administration along with ‘Pasumai Vikatan’, he said the Revolution had poisoned air, water and food because of the application of fertilisers and pesticides.

Not only that, the Revolution had done much more damage, he said. “It also polluted the soil, forcing the farmer to add more and more fertiliser and had finally denuded the land to the extent that productivity has started coming down.”

The agriculture graduate continued, “That apart, the repeated use of fertiliser and pesticide pushed farmers into the debt trap, and, unable to come out of the clutches of money lenders, many farmers committed suicide.”

The only alternative for farmers, he suggested, was to reduce the cost of input and also ‘zero’ it. “When there is no external input, the cost of cultivation comes down, soil, water, crops and the produce turn healthy, making agriculture a profitable occupation for farmers,” he said.

Mr. Palekar said Indian agriculture for long remained sustainable only because of the low external input factor and that it turned bad only after the advent of foreign companies which sold “poisons” by marketing them as “medicines”.

The Editor of Vikatan group of publications, B. Srinivasan, said the interest of ‘Pasumai Vikatan’ lay in farmers’ well being and the training programme was one such measure.

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