In Zambia, NOW Partners Foundation (NOW) and Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS) are leading pilot projects grounded in natural farming practices to help boost producers’ yields, incomes, and resilience.
Natural farming is a chemical-free farming approach that relies on locally available materials and natural processes, rather than synthetic inputs. The approach utilizes practices including cover-cropping, low-tillage, and the planting of diverse crops to protect soil health and biodiversity while reducing costs for farmers.
“It’s relying on some of the latest in modern science and agronomic research to develop a new and innovative method of agroecology that is responsive to so many of the challenges and conditions that farmers are facing globally,” Aya Okawa, the Creative Director and Managing Partner at NOW Partners Foundation, tells Food Tank.
The pilots in Zambia are modeled on the Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) program. Launched by the government of Andhra Pradesh in 2016 and implemented by RySS, it helps farmers in the region transition from chemical to natural farming. In eight years, the program grew from 40,000 to over 1 million farmers, and has led to increased farmer incomes, improved climate resilience, and significant savings in water usage.
To bring the program to Zambia, NOW Partners and RySS are building new relationships between APCNF experts in India and farmers in Zambia. The organizations partnered with Salesian Sisters’ Valponasca Learning Farm and the Jesuit Kasisi Agricultural Training Centre, who both operate with networks of thousands of farmers.
Representatives from these networks, along with members of the Zambian government, visited APCNF’s experimental fields in Andhra Pradesh. There, they learned about natural farming methods before returning home to adapt these techniques to local Zambian conditions.
Central to the APCNF model is the concept of farmer-to-farmer coaching, Okawa explains. Champion Natural Farmers train and motivate other farmers in transitioning to natural farming, which APCNF says has enabled the model to scale quickly in Andhra Pradesh. NOW and APCNF want to see the same approach applied in Zambia.
“The idea is to build a farmer-to-farmer coaching network that will help to not only spread the knowledge to additional farmers, but to create support within the farmer communities,” Okawa tells Food Tank.
After their first natural farming growing season, farmers are noticing results. “We have seen Natural Farming crops survive storms when the chemical crops were destroyed. We have seen stronger plants, and paid less than for chemical inputs,” says Salesian Sister Chansa Modester of the Valponasca Learning Farm.
Okawa says the practices are also boosting resilience to extreme weather events. When heavy rainfall affected two maize fields, one a conventionally treated and other in the pilot project, the naturally farmed field fared better. “The chemical field saw a lot of the maize that was damaged and destroyed,” she explains. But the adjacent natural farming field “remained standing throughout those same conditions.”
Planting diverse crops also creates food sources and income for farmers throughout the year, Okawa says. Whereas chemically treated fields were planted with only maize, the naturally farmed plots had a variety of vegetables and leafy greens interplanted with the maize.
“Having this method of biodiversity crops and the multi-layered cropping contributes to improved food security so that farmers have sources of food on an ongoing basis that can be harvested,” Okawa explains. This added source of food and income has made farmers “excited to integrate the new ideas into their fields.”
Looking ahead, NOW and its partners are planning to scale up the pilots in Zambia, including expanding natural farming at Valponasca Learning Farm and the Jesuit Kasisi Agricultural Training Centre. Okawa also shares that Zambia’s agricultural colleges and extension systems—which train 5,000 emerging farmers and experts annually, according to NOW—are seeking to integrate APCNF into their curricula and develop new implementation pilots.
NOW and RySS are also leading collaborations in Sri Lanka and Brazil, and have identified additional countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America for future pilots.
“The promising results and enthusiasm of implementation partners in Zambia is invigorating NOW’s work to scope additional pilots globally,” Okawa tells Food Tank.
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Photo courtesy of NOW Partners Foundation
