Rythu Sadhikara Samstha Zero Budget Natural Farming (APCNF)

What is Rythu Sadhikara Samstha Zero Budget Natural Farming?

Rythu Sadhikara Samstha Zero Budget Natural Farming is Andhra Pradesh's programme for moving farmers off purchased chemical inputs and onto farm-made biological preparations. The programme is run by Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS), literally "farmer empowerment organisation", a not-for-profit company established under the Andhra Pradesh Department of Agriculture to implement it.

The programme began under the label Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), the term popularised by the agriculturist Subhash Palekar, and Andhra Pradesh became the first Indian state to adopt it as official policy at scale from 2016. It was later renamed Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF). The rename was substantive, not cosmetic. "Zero budget" overstated the case: a natural farmer's cash costs drop sharply because fertiliser and pesticide purchases stop, but labour, seed and cattle upkeep remain real costs. "Community managed" describes how the programme actually works, farmer to farmer, through village-level resource persons, rather than through departmental extension staff issuing instructions.

What does a farmer actually receive?

APCNF is a knowledge and hand-holding programme rather than a cash transfer, and a reader looking for a rupee entitlement will not find one. What RySS provides:

• Free training on the core practices, delivered in the village and in the farmer's own language.
• A community resource person (CRP), a practising natural farmer from the area, often a woman from a self-help group, who visits through the season and troubleshoots in the field.
• Demonstration plots in the village so farmers can see results on local soil before committing their own land.
• Know-how for making the preparations on the farm, so the farmer stops buying inputs rather than switching to a different purchased product.
• Group and institutional support through farmer groups, which in some areas extends to shared seed, marketing linkage and certification support.

Specific input, incentive or premium support components have existed in particular districts and particular years, funded through convergence with central schemes and external programmes. Because those vary and have been revised, a farmer should ask the village CRP or the Rythu Bharosa Kendram what is actually available in that mandal this season rather than rely on any figure found online.

Who can join, and who cannot?

You can join if:

• You farm land in Andhra Pradesh, whether you own it or cultivate it as a tenant.
• You are willing to convert at least a plot to natural farming and follow the practices through a full season.
• You can access cattle dung and urine, your own or a neighbour's, since the preparations depend on them. Desi cow material is preferred in the standard method.

Practical bars rather than formal exclusions:

• A farmer with no access to any cattle material will struggle with the core preparations and is normally advised to arrange a local source first.
• A farmer unwilling to stop chemical inputs on the converted plot is not practising the method; partial application on the same plot defeats the point.
• Non-farmers cannot apply for a personal benefit. APCNF is not a household welfare scheme, and there is no payment to someone who does not cultivate.
• Land outside Andhra Pradesh is not eligible; the programme is a state programme.

There is no income ceiling, no caste criterion and no minimum landholding. Small and marginal farmers are the programme's primary constituency precisely because the cost saving matters most to them.

What are the core practices?

Four practices form the backbone of the method, and a farmer joining APCNF will be trained on all four:

1. Microbial soil inoculant, a fermented preparation of cow dung, cow urine, jaggery, pulse flour and a handful of undisturbed soil, applied to the field to restore soil biology.
2. Seed treatment — seed coated before sowing with a dung- and urine-based preparation to protect early germination.
3. Soil cover. The soil is never left bare, using crop residue mulch and live cover, which conserves moisture and moderates soil temperature.
4. Continuous living roots; diverse cropping, intercropping and border crops so that living roots feed soil organisms year round rather than only during one crop's cycle.

Botanical pest deterrents made from locally available leaves and cattle material sit alongside these in place of purchased pesticide.

How to apply for natural farming support in Andhra Pradesh

Enrolment is deliberately low-friction and happens in the village, not online.

1. Find your village's natural farming community resource person. Ask at the Rythu Bharosa Kendram (RBK) in your village, which is the state's single point of contact for all agriculture services. Almost every village in the programme has a CRP or a linked CRP from a neighbouring village.
2. Attend a village training session or visit a demonstration plot. This is where the practices are shown rather than described, and it is the step most likely to determine whether a farmer sticks with the method.
3. Register your plot with the CRP. Give your Aadhaar and identify the survey number or plot you are converting. Tenant farmers should record the land through a Crop Cultivator Rights Card where they have one.
4. Complete e-crop booking for the season at the RBK, so the state's records show what you sowed on that plot.
5. Start with a small plot for one season and follow the CRP's schedule of preparations, applications and mulching.
6. Escalate to the Mandal Agriculture Officer if your village has no CRP and the RBK cannot connect you to one.

How does a farmer track their participation?

APCNF participation is tracked in the field register maintained by the CRP and in the RBK's records, not through a public status portal. To check where you stand:

1. Ask the CRP for your entry in the village natural farming register.
2. Confirm your e-crop booking for the plot at the RBK, since that is the state record that links you to the land and crop.
3. Ask the Mandal Agriculture Officer if a specific component: seed, input or reimbursement; was sanctioned in your mandal and whether your name is on the list for it.

What commonly goes wrong in the first year?

• Converting the whole farm at once, then panicking at a yield dip in the transition. Convert a plot, keep the rest as it is.
• Making the preparations wrongly or too late. Fermented preparations have a usable window; a batch made too early or stored badly does not work, and the farmer concludes the method failed.
• No reliable cattle material, so applications are skipped mid-season.
• Mixing chemical inputs into a converted plot when pest pressure rises, which undoes the soil biology the season was meant to build.
• Expecting a cash benefit and losing interest when none arrives. The return from APCNF is a lower input bill and, over seasons, better soil, not a transfer.
• No CRP in the village, which genuinely happens in mandals the programme has not reached. The Mandal Agriculture Officer is the route to raise it.

Where do I get help?

• Rythu Bharosa Kendram in your village. The first stop for anything agricultural in Andhra Pradesh.
• Village natural farming community resource person for day-to-day field problems.
• Mandal Agriculture Officer and District Agriculture Officer for escalation and for questions about district-level components.
• Gram or Ward Sachivalayam, or the state citizen helpline 1902, for a written grievance.

Training and enrolment under the natural farming programme are free. No farmer should pay a fee to any agent to be enrolled, and no purchased product is required to practise the method. The whole point is that the inputs are made, not bought.