National Mission on Natural Farming

National Mission on Natural farming aims at creating institutional capacities for documentation and dissemination of best practices, make practicing farmers as partners in promotion strategy, ensure capacity building and continuous handholding and finally attracting farmers to the natural farming willingly on the merit of the system. The main objectives of the scheme are: • To promote alternative system of farming for freedom from external purchased inputs, cost reduction and thereby increasing income of farmers• To popularize integrated agriculture-animal husbandry models based on desi cow and local resources.• To collect, validate and document Natural Farming practices being practiced in various parts of the country and to encourage participatory research with farmers on further up scaling• To undertake activities for awareness creation, capacity building, promotion, and demonstration of Natural Farming.• To create standards, certification procedure and branding for Natural Farming products for national and international markets.

Benefits• Farmers practicing Natural Farming reported similar yields to those following conventional farming. In several cases, higher yields per harvest were also reported.• As Natural Farming does not use any synthetic chemicals, health risks and hazards are eliminated. The food has higher nutrition density and therefore offers better health benefits.• Natural Farming ensures better soil biology, improved agrobiodiversity and a more judicious usage of water with much smaller carbon and nitrogen footprints.• Natural Farming aims to make farming viable and aspirational by increasing net incomes of farmers on account of cost reduction, reduced risks, similar yields, incomes from intercropping.• By working with diverse crops that help each other and cover the soil to prevent unnecessary water loss through evaporation, Natural Farming optimizes the amount of 'crop per drop'.