EDITORIALS
Mirage of Zero Budget Farming
Is “zero budget farming” the new demagoguery of the state to camouflage misgovernment?
T
he conferring of the Padma Shri on Marathi agriculturist middle peasantry—as a political pressure group—has played a
Subhash Palekar had brought the concept of Zero Budget critical role in determining the electoral fate of political parties
(Natural) Farming (ZBF) to public notice in 2016. In the in this country, particularly in the Hindi belt in the north.
context of the vulnerability faced by the commercial input- Simultaneously, the non-inclusion of the small/marginal farm-
intensive agrarian systems in the country, many perceive this ers and agricultural labourers in this pressure politics has pre-
naturalistic farming method as a potential breakthrough. First, vented any radicalism in the farmers’ agitation in this country.
by eliminating the use of purchased/commercial seeds, fertilisers, In such settings, government policies have often been mere
and chemicals, production costs can be drastically cut down. “pacifiers” and not “transformers” for the agrarian society.
Second—and largely as a consequence of the first factor—by Recall that the first recognition for the ZBF (and its champion,
reducing farmers’ reliance on loans, their entrapment in debts Palekar) in 2016 came on the back of a political agitation against
can be avoided. If these are among the reasons underlying the the re-promulgation of an ordinance to remove the mandatory
enthusiasm of the Bharatiya Janata Party government at the “consent” clause and the social impact assessment from the
centre for pushing the ZBF as a strategy for the distressed agri- Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition,
culture in this country—through its Economic Survey 2018–19 and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, in December 2015.
budget 2019—then our scepticism about the government’s With the issue of “ownership” of land hanging in uncertainty,
intentions may be excused as a critic’s paraphernalia. But, will it what difference would any recommendation on farming tech-
be easy to side-step some of the crude realities? nology make for a farmer? Moreover, ZBF does not mean zero
Reportedly, Palekar’s experimentation with ZBF was almost a production costs to farmers. It rather means that production
decade old by the time he was felicitated in 2016. Yet, apart costs will be compensated by income from “intercrops,” thereby
from some media reports and case studies that were predomi- making farming close to a zero-budget activity. Pushing a
nantly published and publicised around the time of the award, farming technology for intercrops without transforming an
and the books written by Palekar himself on the ZBF techniques incentive structure that currently encourages monoculture
per se, no independent, in-depth economic assessments of this (read, the minimum support prices), speaks volumes about the
farming model are available in the public domain. With a 2016 political will of a self-proclaimed “farmer-friendly” government.
case study conducted by the La Via Campesina (LVC)—a coali- The demagoguery of “going back to the basics” through ZBF may
tion of 182 farmer organisations across 81 countries—mention- come in handy to a government interested in arousing nationalist
ing that most of the farmers collaborating with Palekar sentiments among the commoners and diverting them from
in Karnataka came from the “middle peasantry,” the issue of asking the hard questions on the government’s accountability
the inclusiveness of this model remains open to contention, as towards the holistic development of a resilient farming system
do the aspects of scalability and sustainability. While the same in the country. Whereas a keen observer will find more explosive
report cites the marketability of the ZBF produce to be a major issues of misgovernment buried in this demagoguery. For instance,
limitation, some recent media reports have brought to the fore if “going back to the basics” means developing a low-cost farming
several instances where farmers using the ZBF methods have system, then why does Andhra Pradesh, one of the prime cham-
returned to the conventional input-intensive farming practices pions of ZBF, have to amass a fund to the tune of around `17,000
on the grounds of profitability. crore for its Climate Resilient Zero Budget Natural Farming pro-
With the implications of the ZBF for the farmers, especially gramme? Such huge investments—coming from global financial
the smallholders, being a black box, what could possibly ex- and agribusiness corporations and through climate bonds—call
plain the central government’s stance of projecting it as a to attention the obvious contradiction of policy and practice.
strategy for doubling farmer’s income by 2020? Going by the More disconcertingly, it raises the apprehension that the ZBF is
aforementioned case study of the LVC, if the prime beneficiary of perhaps a new tool in the hands of the neo-liberal state to serve
the ZBF is the “middle peasantry,” then suspecting this stance to be the dual purpose of incentivising its corporate benefactors and
a political expediency will not be unjustified. Historically, the executing austerity in its spendings on priority sectors.
8 JUly 27, 2019 vol lIV no 30 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
