The Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP) has recently engaged in a massive programme to promote and scale-up the adoption of ZBNF (Zero Budget Natural Farming) in this Southern State of the Indian Union. To sustain its vision and work, the GoAP has expressed interest to conduct a foresight exercise on agriculture by 2050 (and/or 2030), with a scenario showing the potential impacts of a conversion of its 6 million farmers to ZBNF

FAO is conducted a workshop in Andhra under TCP ZBNF today. This is one of the first event of the study on Foresight through which we will build potential scenarios for Agriculture in Andhra  (including continued Green Revolution scenario; versus current policy of scaling up ZBNF to 6 million in AP; versus hybrid scenarios etc) and their implications on labour, ecosystem services, nutrition etc.  

It is the start of a data intensive process led by our partner CIRAD (French agriculture research institute) who has world class expertise on Foresight. Foresight is a tool to explore and co-construct futures with policy makers and society stakeholders. This will last until 2020, with contributions from a transdisciplinary expert group and government departments.

Participant to this first event include AP Chief Principal Secretary, Departments of agriculture, livestock, horticulture, statistics, health and others; and selected academics.