Gulbarga, February 23: Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA), which is based on natural farming, is fast catching up with small and marginal farmers in Andhra Pradesh.
CMSA, which was first introduced in 450 villages in 10 districts on a pilot basis in 2005-06 by the Andhra Pradesh Government covering 25,000 acres of land owned by 15,000 farmers, has now been extended in 22 districts covering 8,225 villages benefitting 25,77,877 acres of land owned by 10,47,093 farmers.
Sources said here on Tuesday that the objective of CMSA was to work on agriculture-based livelihoods, supporting farmers to adopt sustainable agricultural practices to reduce the cost of cultivation and increase net income. CMSA also aims at bringing down excessive dependence on chemical inputs in agriculture and help farmers revert to natural farming.
CMSA had also introduced a paradigm shift in agriculture practices moving from input-centric agriculture model to knowledge and skill-based model, making the best use of locally available natural resources and taking advantage of natural processes. Another important component of CMSA is to build soil health by considering soil as a living organism and a bank for crop nutrients. The focus was given to build soil microbial activity. CMSA adopted three-pronged strategy to enhance earthworm activity in soil which included elimination of chemical fertilizer, adopting mulching and application of dung-based inoculants
-Agencies