NEW DELHI: About 4.09 lakh hectare area has been covered under natural farming in eight states since the introduction of a scheme in this regard in the current fiscal, agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar informed Parliament on Tuesday.
Out of the total area covered so far, maximum of 1 lakh hectares has been covered in Andhra Pradesh, followed by Madhya Pradesh (99,000 hectares), Chhattisgarh (85,000 hectares), Kerala (84,000 hectares), Odisha (24,000 hectares), Himachal Pradesh (12,000 hectares), Jharkhand (3,400 hectares) and Tamil Nadu (2,000 hectares), he said.
The government introduced the Bhartiya Prakritik Krishi Padhati (BPKP) as a sub-scheme of the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) in 2020-21 for the promotion of traditional indigenous practices, including natural farming.
“Until now, under natural farming an area of 4.09 lakh hectare… has been covered and a total fund of Rs 4587.17 lakh has been released in eight states across the country…,” Tomar said in his written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha.
Under the BPKP scheme, financial assistance of Rs 12,200 per hectare for three years is provided for cluster formation, capacity building and continuous handholding by trained personnel, certification and residue analysis, he added.
The scheme mainly emphasises on exclusion of all synthetic chemical inputs and promotes on-farm biomass recycling with major stress on biomass mulching; use of cow dung-urine formulations; plant-based preparations and time to time working of soil for aeration.