What is Zero Budget Natural Farming?

ZBNF or Zero budget natural farming is an all natural way to grow crops without chemical pesticides, fertilisers, and requires no additional money for other inputs. This was popularised by Subhash Palekar in India.

ZBNF is very similar to the natural farming concepts of Masanobu Fukuoka who in his book, the one straw revolution, talked about letting nature take it’s course and not trying to improve upon it.

Sounds too good to be true?

Well, think about it. Forests didn’t need so much work. Nature has it all figured out and the ecosystem existed long before we started actively cultivating. So maybe, if we just let nature do it’s work we might not need all the additional steps?

But, what about the yield?

That’s the million dollar question which everyone continue to argue upon. While some studies from agricultural universities show decreased yield, Fukuoka’s book talked about the same or more yield using natural farming techniques, which also makes the method profitable as it has considerably lesser input costs.

The Better India has a blog on how Mr. Palekar started working on this method of farming which takes us back to our roots

Read more at The Better India

While the jury is still out there to see whether this works or not, there are 2 things that are indisputable wins of the the zero budget natural farming way –

• Very low input costs. So even if the yield is low, the overall acreage of land is much more profitable which makes the ZBNF method more attractive.
• Improves soil quality over time. While chemicals actively kill the microorganisms in the soil, thus requiring more and more application year after year, ZBNF ensures the soil quality improves over time so the yield gets better.

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the UN also endorsed this study which talks about how farmers have seen income improvements with Natural Farming.

In ZBNF our expenses are very low. It doesn’t matter what the yield is, I still make a profit because my costs are negligible. Plus I’ve added intercrops to this, so I get income from many crops, not just one

– ZBNF Farmer, Balgaum, India from the case study provided by La Via Campesina

Let’s outline the basic principles which serve a good introduction to Zero Budget Farming.

Subash Palekar has provided four important non-negotiable guidelines

1. Bijamrita: Seed Treatment using local cow dung and cow urine,
2. Jiwamrita: Applying inoculation made of local cow dung and cow urine without any fertilizers and pesticides
3. Mulching: Activities to ensure favourable microclimate in the soil
4. Waaphasa: Suitable soil aeration

You can read more about this here.