Minister for Agriculture Kakani Govardhan Reddy on Saturday termed the four-year ‘Farmer Scientist’ course, formulated by Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS), as a role model to the world. The course covers natural farming, soil protection, export marketing, high yield with low investment. The student-farmers are given a monthly living stipend as well.
Addressing farmers after launching the course on the campus of Indo-German Global Academy for Agro-ecology Research and Learning (IGCARL) at Pulivendula on Saturday, he said the government was keen on supporting the project by launching an exclusive university for natural farming.
Mr. Reddy urged farmers to practice knowledge-intensive agriculture, with a mix of traditional practices and modern science, to make farming remunerative. “It has been demonstrated here that a farmer can get a minimum monthly income of ₹10,000 from an acre of ‘A’ grade farm even in a rainfed area like Rayalaseema,” he observed.
RySS executive vice-chairman T. Vijay Kumar dubbed it as the first-ever graduation course for practising natural farmers to become ‘natural farming scientists’. “Our vision is to reach all the eight lakh plus farmers practising natural farming on four lakh hectares across 3,730 villages in the State in the next 7-8 years”, he said.
Several foreign scientists and economists virtually addressed the farmers. Advisors to Government I. Tirupal Reddy (agriculture) and P. Sivaprasad Reddy (horticulture) and RySS CEO Rama Rao took part in the event.
