Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Community Managed Natural Farming (CMNF) eschews the use of synthetic chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides, catalyzing a radical paradigm shift from conventional chemical based farming to agroecological-based natural farming methods across the state.
The protests by Indian farmers against three laws initially passed as ordinances have gone from sporadic in August 2020 to the biggest peaceful civil society protest in the world.
If anything is to be learned from the template of Bt cotton it is that much of biotechnology in agriculture is an exercise in linear thinking, of reductionism, and of unexpected consequences.
Among a number of movements, civil society organisations and campaigns addressing the agrarian crisis and the effects of industrial agriculture in India, the permaculture movement is fast gaining ground among subsistence farmers and proponents of alternative agriculture.
It will take some time for Amrita Bhoomi to build a new food system. Chukki and KRRS have to resolve how to broadly distribute peasant-grown and saved seeds, how to strengthen markets for agroecologically produced food, and how to knit a coalition with farmer organizations across India. So far, however, Chukki said, “No zero-budget natural farming farmer has ever committed suicide or gone into debt.”
Without serious efforts to stem the mining of groundwater, food production will decline.
A little over two years ago, we sold our house in Lexington, Kentucky to come back and settle in India. Me and my husband had spent seven and eleven years respectively in the United States and after years of confusion, vacillation, and endless planning, we finally decided to make the big move. Our compulsion to leave the United States was very strong, but our feelings were mixed. We had missed family and the surroundings familiar to us terribly the whole time we were in the United States, but so many years can hardly be just an interim—it is real time, and bound to be significant in certain ways.
