Subash Palekar's zero budget no-till rice farming

This is some information about Zero budget farming after reading Subash Palekar's books and also interacting with farmers. I have also given a brief about zero budget no-till rice farming given in Subash Palekar's "Techniques of Spiritual farming". I don't practice zero budget farming, but follow natural farming as advocated by Masanobu Fukuoka.

Zero budget farming advocated by Subash Palekar from Maharashtra is popular in different states of India. This method basically talks about mulching using agriculture waste generated from farm, mixed cropping with stressing importance of leguminous crops and also applying a set of preparations based on cow dung, urine of traditional Indian cow. This is called as Zero budget since all the required things can be cultivated at farm itself and hence no inputs has to be brought from outside.

The most popular preparation is Jeewamritha which has cow dung, cow urine, pulse powder, jaggery and a handful of soil. Jeewamritha is not talked as a fertiliser rather it contains lot of microbes and hence decomposition of the mulch becomes faster and earth worm activity becomes more and land becomes fertile. People who has used Jeewamritha tells that visible changes in the earth worms can be seen within a week itself. Also one good thing is that 1 local cow is enough for 30 acres of land. The calculation goes like this, Jeewamritha has to be applied once in a month per acre and local cow gives 10Kgs of cowdung per day which is sufficient for an acre in a day. So within a month all 30 acres can be completed once and cycle repeats. I was impressed with this scheme, since 1 cow per 30 acre of land seems to be a sustainable model. After seeing some farms I felt that if the cows increases in the farm, the fertility will reduce since no grass will be left for mulching.

Subash Palekar's has written three books on Zero budget farming..Principles of Zero budget farming, Philosophy of Zero budget farming and Techniques of zero budget farming. The book Techniques of zero budget farming gives a clear description of how all mixed cropping can be done and a description of how various crops are cultivated using Zero budget farming philosophy.

I had visited some zero budget farms - Krishnappa Dasappa Gowda in Mysore, Manoj in Kanjikode, Palakkad, Chandrasekhar, Vithinaserry, Palakkad and Dr. Raju , Karivannur, Thrissur.

Subash Palekar also talks about zero budget no-till paddy farming in his book - Techniques of spiritual farming. This method goes like this..

When the paddy crop is standing and 15 days before harvest, broadcast Bijamritha treated seeds of pulses like beans,cow pea, green gram etc..Some seeds will fall on the paddy but eventually they also will end up in ground. There will be sufficient water for these pulses to germinate.Since paddy is already matured the leaves will allow more sunlight to reach the pulses which will be sufficient for them to germinate and come up.

During harvesting the seedlings of the pulses will be crushed, but they will again standup. The same thing was described in One straw revolution, but the seedlings in that case are rice seedling..typically the pulse seedlings may break if they are crushed by the foots of the harvesters, so not completely convinced if it will work. Now apply Jeewamritha periodically.

Now on the bunds of the fields he asks to plant glyricedia, pegion pea, turmeric, ginger, cow pea etc..and use the waste from all these for mulching the field later. Glyrecedia provides mulching material at each 21 days.

In March, pulses will be matured, harvest and return all the remains to the field. Also mulch with straw immediately after harvesting the pulses. This may be to avoid hardening of soil with sun light and wind...Apply Jeewamritha over this...March, April and May the soil will be covered with straw.. In the first week of May treat the paddy seeds with Beejamritha. Make holes in the mulch at the distance of 9 inches to 1.5 feet and dibble the seeds into this and add some soil over to it using sickle. Pre-monsoon rain starts by may end and apply Jeewamritha and keep applying Jeewamritha once in 15 days. And again before harvesting the paddy sow the pulses and cycle continues.

This method looks to be impressive, now would like to see some one really practicing it.