Natural farming opens doors to prosperity

In the face of it Ladwari appears to be like any ordinary village but if you speak to the farmers here you soon realize that this village has been in the middle of important changes in recent times.

- BHARAT DOGRA

These winds of change in the village, located in Niwari district of Madhya Pradesh, relate largely to the introduction of natural farming and were brought here by a project called BIWAL (Bundelkhand Initiatives for Water, Agriculture and Livelihoods) being implemented by Srijan and its partner organizations in several parts of the Bundelkhand region.

Under this project, several aspects of natural farming are introduced in such a way that while expenditure on expensive inputs goes down, there is high chance of yields being maintained or even increasing. This is made possible by training for on-farm scientific preparation of organic fertilizer and pest repellant and by more productive used of farmland which integrates staple crops with small multi-layer vegetable gardens, fruit orchards and kitchen gardens.

This package and the demonstration farms started by selected lead farmers initiated intense debate in the community. Some farmers responded by bringing in a small part of their land under natural farming, observing the results carefully, then increasing this only if the results were encouraging.

Almost all here are small farmers, and cannot take big risks. Hence they have tried to be very cautious.