Kailash Murthy
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Zero Farm
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TIMES OF INDIA                      BANGLORE 8/8/98

            M.K. Kailasmurthy, a chronic asthma patient as a child and hailing from a farmer’s faily in Mardahalli village of Tirumakudalu Narasipur in Mysore district, never imagined that one day he would become an expert in “zero cultivation” (natural farming) which would win him international acclaim.
            Blame it on his asthama, but Kailasmurthy took to sports as therapy for his ailment, which earned him laurels on the track, and in turn, a job in Vijaya Bank. In his free time, he took to agriculture, once again as therapy for asthma and started cultivating six and a half acres of land given to him by his in laws.
            With a penchant for trying his hand at modern farming techniques, Kailasmurthy took up natural farming after he stumbled on a book by Fukuokoa expounding on its principles. In ‘zero cultivation’ or natural farming, no fertilizers, pesticides or weedicides are used and there is no tilling of land to grow crops.
            Today Kailasmurthy, with good returns from the banana, areca, mulberry and drumstick crops on his land, is a sought after figure in Mysore district.
            Many foreigners, including experts in the field of natural farming, have visited Doddaindawadi village in Kollegal taluk to witness Kailasmurthy’s experiments in natural farming.
            It is hard to believe Kailasmurthy when he reels off confidently that planting radish between the mulberry plants will curb weeds, the radish acting as a natural weedicide. Likewise, he grows drumstick trees between banana and areca crops to check weeds in the plots.
            When Kailasmurthy adopted natural farming techniques and shunned chemicals others ridiculed him, he recalls. “They thought I was a fool. But I convinced I would succeed.”
            Barring water, no outside agents are used to raise the crops, Kailasmurthy claims, and the increase in the quantity of microbes and biomass increased the self sustainability of the soil, apart from making the soil “dynamic”.
            On the yields, Kailasmurthy says, “In the early years the yield from natural farming was not so high, but later, the yields increased considerably. I have received about Rs 1.5 lakh from the sale of bananas, mangoes, drumsticks and mulberry leaves.” He stressed the yield was high and so was the demand because the agricultural produce did not have residual chemicals in them.
            Kailasmurthy now has a band of followers and they have together set up a society – Nisarga – comprising farmers from neighbouring villages. Kailasmurthy now plans to raise paddy and sugarcane crops, through the technique of “zero cultivation”.

 

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