In the Union Budget 2024, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has announced that over one crore farmers will be initiated into natural farming in the next two years.
Natural farming is a chemical-free, livestock-based traditional farming method. Within this, approaches like Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) aim to make total input costs zero.
Natural farming involves growing crops without chemical inputs like urea, relying instead on cow products such as cow urine and dung from indigenous cows.
For the past six years, Jaswinder Kaur and Ranjit Singh from Himachal Pradesh have been using ZBNF to cultivate at least 25 kinds of crops such as lemons, moringa, pomegranate, sugarcane, turmeric, wheat, and more.
The couple makes their own natural products using simple ingredients like cow dung, urine, and agro-waste like leaves and jaggery. Here are some of their tips for making natural fertilisers and insecticides.
Bijamrit: Bijamrit is a formulation of cow dung, urine, and chuna (lime). It is used to treat seeds before sowing.
Jivamrit: After germination, fertiliise the soil with jivamrit. To prepare it, take five kg of cow dung and mix it with seven litres of cow urine in a 200-litre drum.
To this, add 1.5 kg of besan (chickpea flour) and jaggery each. Fill the water to the rim and stir the mixture. Take 40 litres of jivamrit to fertilise one bigha of land.
Brahmastra: It is a natural insecticide which can be prepared using leaves. Crush one kg each of four kinds of leaves, including neem. Mix the crushed leaves with four litres of cow urine and dung.
Boil the mixture. After two boils, cool it down and strain it into a tank. The insecticide will be ready to spray on crops after 48 hours and can be stored for six months.
Agnihastra: If insects are not controlled with brahmastra, use agnihastra. It is prepared using spicy green chillies, peppers, and garlic. It is sure to control pest attacks.
Using these natural farming techniques, the couple has doubled their income from Rs 55,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh.