Rainfed Agriculture

Rapid population growth is leading to land fragmentation and reducing the amount of cultivable land available to owners. This trend of declining land ownership combined with natural disasters is reducing the viability and sustainability of agriculture.

Agricultural intensification riding on the Green Revolution ushered bountiful production of selected staples (rice, wheat, maize) in the developing nations and caused a significant economic growth.

Following independence and with the advent of the green revolution, agriculture in India has been based on input intensive farming, and agricultural policies and investments continue to support irrigated agriculture. This excessive focus on irrigated agriculture has led to the neglect of rainfed agriculture.

Japanese encephalitis (JE) - a mosquito borne viral disease, is one of the important causes for childhood mortality in Asia. India has a high burden of the disease with 13.7 percent of 63, 854 acute encephalitis cases from 2010 to 2017 caused due to Japanese Encephalitis virus (JEV) leading to deaths in 17 percent of these cases with the north-east being a perennial hotspot for outbreaks.

Often overlooked in food security policies, indigenous uncultivated wild food and traditional crops is a major source of dietary diversity for tribal communities since millennia.

With changing climatic and market conditions, Indian agriculture sector needs appropriate transition in cropping patterns to ensure sustainability in growth of the sector and inclusiveness of land-constrained farmers in the intensification process.

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification's (UNCCD) evidence-based flagship Global Land Outlook 2 (GLO2) report states that “as food prices soar amid rapid climate and other planetary changes, “crisis footing” needed to conserve, restore and use land sustainably.” The report is the most comprehensive consolidation of information on the topic ever assembled.

A recent study ‘Impact of large-scale, government legislated and funded organic farming training on pesticide use in Andhra Pradesh, India: a cross-sectional study’ assessed the impact of the Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) programme.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act is one of the largest social protection programmes in the world, providing guarantee of income to some 55 million people every year.

This manual (third edition) in Hindi developed by Rajinder Chaudhary on natural farming, also known as organic, zero budget or alternative farming, is an attempt to spread awareness among Indian farmers about the above sustainable agriculture methods.