FARMING BEYOND FERTILIZER, with Vijay Kumar Thallam
What 1.8 million farmers in Andhra Pradesh can teach us as we adapt to global shortages in synthetic fertilizers.
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FARMING BEYOND FERTILIZER, with Vijay Kumar Thallam
What 1.8 million farmers in Andhra Pradesh can teach us
as we adapt to global shortages in synthetic fertilizers.
SATURDAY MAY 2nd, 7 PM PDT, 10 PM EDT
(which is Sunday, May 3rd 7:30 AM IST, Noon AEST)
Click here to see this in your time zone
In our kickoff event (in preparation for an upcoming in-depth course series) Vijay Kumar Thallam will share the exciting story of a program that has helped 1.8 million farmers - in Andhra Pradesh, India - make the transition to natural farming methods, in ways that are productive and profitable.
With widespread disruption of production and transport of synthetic fertilizers due to the war on Iran - and increasing awareness of the ecological effects of fertilizer use - the world needs examples of large-scale farmer-led transitions away from synthetic fertilizers, using methods that don’t collapse farm production or produce widespread famine. The Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) Initiative is one of the strongest examples of success.
APCNF's farmers replace synthetic fertilizers (as well as GMO seeds and pesticides) with agroecological approaches that include intensely diverse cover crops, natural biostimulants, foliar sprays and seed pelletization to support healthy plant growth and soil biology, and year-round food production. These extremely low-cost methods use local seeds and ingredients from within the village (forest soils, cow dung/urine, herbs, etc.), and result in far higher net profits directly to the farmer with little to no loss in yield, even in the first couple of years.
These methods also boost populations of pollinators, beneficial insects, and birds; increase the health of both farmers and consumers; and provide local cooling effects and increased groundwater supplies.
- How the current political situation has disrupted fertilizer production and transport
- How the current situation is compounding a global food system that is already unworkable
- The “Green Revolution” and its unintended consequences on food production, farmer debt and dependency, etc.
- Ecological impacts of fertilizer and the dangers of production and use.
- Water shortages that are heightened by conventional farm practices
- Corporate profiteering on the backs of farmers
- And the importance of networks and organizing: to enable a widespread, safe, rapid farmer-led transition to agroecological, regenerative, and natural farming approaches
About our Main Presenter: Vijay Kumar Thallam is Executive Vice Chairman of the Indian non-profit Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RYSS), and an advisor on Agriculture and Cooperation to the State Government of Andhra Pradesh. In his 40 years in government, he has spent more than 30 years in leading large scale community mobilization and promotion of livelihoods of rural women, tribal communities and farmers. He served a record 10 years as CEO of the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty in Andhra Pradesh and led the mobilization and empowerment of 11.5 million rural poor women into thrift and credit based self-help groups, so they could move out of poverty. Since 2015, he has been leading the climate resilient, A.P Community managed Natural Farming (APCNF) programme of the Government of Andhra Pradesh.
We deeply appreciate those who can donate toward this event, and/or help to sponsor the upcoming course on this topic.
Your Instructor
Didi Pershouse is well known as an innovative international educator both in-person and online. She is the founder of the Land and Leadership Initiative. Her facilitator's guide Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function is used in over 90 countries.
She became deeply involved in the intersection of food systems and health systems while providing rural health care for two decades at The Center for Sustainable Medicine, and wrote The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and Microbial Communities.
She has written a field training manual for the UN-FAO Farmer Field School Program and the Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming Initiative in India, involving over 1,000,000 smallholder farmers. She was a contributing author to The Climate Emergency: How Africa Can Survive and Thrive; Climate Change and Creation Care; and Health in the Anthropocene. She was one of five speakers at the United Nations-FAO World Soil Day in 2017.
She serves on the Planning Commission for her town, is a board supervisor for the White River Natural Resources Conservation District, and is on the board of directors of Regenerate Earth, Soil Carbon Coalition and the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition. While serving on the state appointed Payment for Ecosystem Services and Soil Health Working Group, she helped to reorient the program back to its public roots. She led a successful effort to conserve the Zebedee Headwaters Wetland while serving as a Vermont Conservation Commissioner.
She is on the Vision Council of the Global Earth Repair Convergence, and a member of the Ecosystem Restoration Alliance. She is a lineage member of the Change Agent Development Community (stewarded by Carol Sanford), and is seeding new communities of practice in a Wisdom tradition that uses living systems thinking.