Rural Self Help Group Meeting, Anantpuram, AP, 2024
In 1970 Norman Borlaug, an American agronomist, received the Nobel Peace Prize for his central role in the Green Revolution. His crop lines and intensive agriculture methods spurred an enormous increase in grain production (especially wheat and rice) and saved millions from malnutrition and starving. That was decades ago. Now serious problems are emerging again: climate change, extreme heat and desertification, overuse of chemical fertilizers, loss of arable land etc. Can the world, and India in particular with its 1.4 billion people, rise up to this challenge?
I am optimistic after a mind blowing visit to India in 2024! Subsequent events have redoubled my hopes.
The Quiet Revolution
In the state of Andhra Pradesh, a quiet agricultural revolution is unfolding, led by farmers, women’s collectives, and a belief that plants and soil in synergy can flourish without chemicals, expensive fertilizers and pesticides.
This is Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming, or APCNF — a Government of Andhra Pradesh initiative led by Vijay Kumar Thullum since 2016. Vijay Kumar is AP’s untiring soldier against rural poverty and the development of scalable community-based natural farming. He says that his farming techniques do not require even a gram of fertilizer! Some benefits include:
- Zero chemicals and fertilizers usage.
- Healthier soil, deeper roots, more nutritious and tasty food.
- No loss of farmland and chemically exhausted fields.
- Extreme water conservation. As Andhra Pradesh experiences semi-arid conditions and erratic monsoons, farmers can grow with 70-90% less water and in sandy soils.
- Growing multiple crops and trees that are symbiotic – mutually beneficial.
- Adaptation to Climate Change. His agriculture can withstand extreme heat, tornados and climate induced catastrophes. A huge advantage!
- Scalable to millions of farmers. This is not a pilot program. In ten years, 1.8 million farmers have joined: 61% of villages and 30% of farmers statewide, with a goal of every village and 4 million farmers by 2030.
Meet Vijay Kumar Thullum
Executive Vice Chairman, RySS · Adviser, Govt. of A.P.
Vijay Kumar is a 1983-batch IAS officer (Andhra Pradesh cadre) who spent much of his career on tribal development, rural livelihoods, and agriculture. As CEO of the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) from 2000 to 2010, he helped organize about 11.5 million rural women into thrift-and-credit self-help groups — the social backbone APCNF still runs on. He later served as the first Mission Director of India’s National Rural Livelihoods Mission (2010–2015), returned as Special Chief Secretary for Agriculture, and after retiring in September 2016 stayed on to lead the state’s natural farming push as Executive Vice Chairman of Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS). In 2023 he received the Prof. M.S. Swaminathan Award for Environment Protection.
A true revolution that will ensure food security for the billions
I have come to believe that Vijay Kumar’s natural farming could well help save India — and, scaled wisely, ensure food security for our planet. Climate Change forecasts are dire: more heat, floods, and failed monsoons. We are losing topsoil and arable land at a frightening pace; desertification creeps across once-productive districts; and decades of extractive farming — chemicals, bare fallows, ever-thirstier irrigation — have exhausted soils and trapped farmers in rising costs. A system that cools the ground, rebuilds the soil sponge, cuts external inputs, and still feeds people is not a niche experiment. It is a lifeline — and APCNF is proving it at the scale of millions of farmers.
In January 2024 I visited farms in Andhra Pradesh and met Vijay Kumar and his team. We talked with farmers growing a variety of crops, walked orchards with dramatic yield and income gains, joined women’s Self Help Group meetings, and heard remarkable stories from the field.
Far-reaching benefits
No fertilizers or synthetic chemicals. That saves expensive imported inputs — but the deeper gain is a regenerative equilibrium between plants and soil: resilient crops, deeper roots, more nutritious food. Chemical farming demands ever more fertilizer and degrades farmland.
In India fertilizer is subsidized by the government. Farmers are afraid that using no fertilizer will substantially decrease yields. If they can be persuaded to try fertilizer-free farming they are surprised to learn that yields actually rise, the produce tastes better. input costs drop, and farmer incomes often climb 30–50%.
India spends roughly $14.5 billion a year on finished fertilizer imports — about 28 million tons — and closer to $27 billion once you count LNG, ammonia, phosphoric acid, rock phosphate and sulphur used in domestic production. Fully implemented natural farming in AP alone could save about Rs. 20,000 crores of foreign exchange yearly on fertilizers. Extend that nationally and the savings could be an order of magnitude larger.
People Power: Women’s collectives at the core
Women farmers and collectives are at the core of this revolution. We visited a rural Self Help Group (SHG) meeting and heard amazing stories of collective support, community encouragement and training, and technology adoption.
Vijay has mobilized the farming communities at the grass roots level. He was active in AP’s female poverty reduction programs and has spent time with rural families and collectives, getting to build personal relationships and trust. He has leveraged this decades long relationship to implement his natural farming ideas adapted to Indian conditions. More than 300,000 women’s Self Help Groups (SHG’s) help each other convert, and over 10,000 Community Resource Persons — successful natural farmers who each commit to converting at least ten more farmers a year — carry the practice village to village. In 8,168 program villages, some 3.5 million women through SHG federations are in charge.
Polycropping and year-round sowing
Polycropping means growing synergistic plants and trees together — one plant’s waste may feed another; one may repel pests from another. Soil need not lie fallow; with natural farming, farms can grow up to four crops a year instead of one or two.
Here I’m talking to an orchard owner in AP who is multi-cropping. He is growing delicious organic radishes as a side crop in his fruit orchard. (I sampled a few and was blown away by the richness of the flavor that burst into my mouth).
Before APCNF, orchards like his often left the ground bare around fruit trees, fearing nutrient competition and stunted fruit trees. Vijay’s work shows certain vegetables beside fruit trees can enhance orchard health, repel pests without pesticides, and add steady cash — what he calls ATMs, “Any Time Money.”
Cooling the land — and riding out climate shocks
Keep living roots and residue on the soil 365 days a year, and the ground stops behaving like a hot plate. Bare AP fields have been measured near 70°C in April; neighboring plots under continuous green cover sit nearer 30°C. Hot bare soil re-radiates heat, sheds rain as runoff, and leaves crops with no buffer. Covered soils infiltrate more water, hold moisture longer, and stay cooler — so yields hold when storms and heat arrive.
Bare AP soils near 70°C versus about 30°C under continuous green cover — plus infiltration and less re-radiated heat.
University of Reading work on 365-day green cover found roughly 13% higher soil organic carbon, ~11% lower bulk density, ~10% lower soil temperature, ~30% higher soil moisture, and ~40% higher infiltration. Deeper roots also show after floods: when cyclone rains flatten chemical paddy, neighboring natural-farming plots often stay standing.
Resilience to Floods through Natural Farming
After cyclone flooding: conventional chemical paddy was flattened; neighboring natural farming plots were still standing.
70% Less Water Use in Dry Conditions
Much of Rayalaseema — including Anantapuram which we visited — is semi-arid: erratic rains, long hot summers, fields that traditionally bake bare before the monsoon. APCNF’s answer is Pre-Monsoon Dry Sowing (PMDS): sow a diverse seed mix into dry soil ahead of the rains, protect it with mulch and microbial coatings, and let the first showers wake a living green cover when conventional fields are still empty. Water use can fall sharply — APCNF materials cite reductions of up to ~70% in some systems — because living cover captures moisture instead of pumping onto evaporating bare ground.
The unlock is seed pelletization: seeds coated with Beejamrutham, clay, powdered Ghana Jeevamrutham and ash so each pellet holds moisture and feeds microbes at germination. A light shower or a few millimeters of life-saving irrigation can establish 20–30 crop types on rainfed land.
In Kurnool, farmer C. Ramachandrudu broadcast 26 pelleted seed types on one acre in early March, used three ~5 mm irrigations in the first three weeks, then went weeks with no rain or irrigation — and still cut thousands of kilos of fodder, projecting about Rs. 40,000 net in ~70 days. On 24 April 2026 his natural-farming soil read 33°C; adjacent fallow hit 56.5°C. In Anantapuramu, Bhagyamma — a single mother who began with a kitchen garden and leased an acre — grew 26 crops on PMDS with only light rain and now earns daily income from her own field.
For 2026–27 the state targets PMDS kits for about 2,200,000 acres and 1.85 million farmers. Result: early income, better main-crop yields, fewer weeds, less fertilizer, green fodder, and less irrigation.
A prize that fits the story
The world is beginning to notice. APCNF won the 2026 Food Planet Prize — the world’s largest environmental award focused on transforming food systems. The $1.5 million prize was presented on June 2, 2026, in Båstad, Sweden, by the Curt Bergfors Foundation. Here is Vijay Kumar Thullum (second from right) accepting the award.
Check out this very informative article by the Food Planet people:
APCNF also won the 2024 Gulbenkian Award, presented by German President, Angela Merkel.
An Informative video on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x37Ifuz2KZg&t=175s
Conclusion: A Green Revolution for Our Time
What Vijay Kumar Thullum and APCNF are building is of monumental significance. The last great leap in feeding humanity — the Green Revolution, for which Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize — saved countless lives through higher-yielding seeds and intensive inputs. Vijay’s work aims at a twin achievement for a hotter, more fragile century: abundance without exhausting the soil, the water, or the climate. If chemical intensification was the breakthrough of the mid-twentieth century, community-managed natural farming may prove the breakthrough we need now — not only for India, but for a planet running out of topsoil and time.
Ashok Vaish
September 28, 2026
In essence Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) says government deficits are not necessarily bad. Since our government has the authority to “print” money it cannot go bankrupt. In this way the government is not like a household which must balance its income with its expenditures. We shouldn’t even label the gap between taxes and public spending as a “deficit”. To the economy at large, such as the American households, the small businesses, the NGO’s, the corporations etc. the extra spending by government means a surplus. So the deficit is really a surplus when viewed from the point of view of the actual economy.
