Community Managed Natural Farming in Andhra Pradesh, India

Summary: The Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) initiative is a transformative, farmer-led response to systemic agricultural crises—soil degradation, water stress, biodiversity loss, and rural distress. Backed by the state and led by Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS), APCNF aims to transition six million farmers to chemical-free, agroecological farming. By centering Sanctity of Nature, Complexity, Agency, Uncertainty, Justice, and Transformation, APCNF integrates economic, environmental, and climate goals.

Its farmer-to-farmer model, long-term support, and whole-village saturation strategy build local leadership and systemic resilience. Women’s Self-Help Groups (SHG)anchor community mobilization and promote inclusive adoption. Natural farming improves yields, reduces emissions, and enhances climate resilience, while empowering farmers through knowledge-sharing and experimentation.

Recognized globally, APCNF is now India’s largest agroecology program, offering a scalable model for regenerative agriculture and community-led development. Challenges remain in labor, market access, and behavior change, but APCNF shows that systemic transformation is possible through sustained, locally driven action. This case study is part of ASRA’s Systemic Risk Response (SRR) Case Studies series—find out more in From Benches to Boardrooms: Responding to Systemic Risks.

Case Study: Community Managed Natural Farming in Andhra Pradesh, India

Overview: Andhra Pradesh faces a confluence of agricultural crises: rural-urban migration, low-paying farm jobs, soil degradation, severe water stress, biodiversity loss, and worsening climate change impacts. Conventional, chemical intensive farming has depleted soil organic matter and compromised food safety and nutrition, trapping farmers in a cycle of debt and diminishing returns.

In response, the state government launched the Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) initiative in 2018 to transition six million farmers and eight million hectares of land from synthetic chemical-based agriculture to zero-budget natural farming (UNEP, 2018).

Led by the not-for-profit Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS), meaning “Farmer Empowerment Organization,” APCNF is designed to be farmer-centric—driven by peer-to-peer extension and grassroots innovation (APCNF, n.d.). It is backed by the Sustainable India Finance Facility, a partnership between the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), BNP Paribas, and the World Agroforestry Centre.

Highlights in Systemic Risk Response

A systemic risk response encompasses any action that deliberately seeks to mitigate, prepare for, adapt to, and/or transform away from the harms of systemic risks. This example shows that systemic transformation is possible through sustained, locally driven action.

Non-Human Sanctity

By rejecting the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, and instead fostering farming practices that work in harmony with nature, the Government of Andhra Pradesh affirms the intrinsic value of ecosystems and biodiversity. This approach enhances soil fertility, water retention, and both above- and below-ground biodiversity, creating resilient agricultural systems that sustain not only human livelihoods and nutritional well-being but also the integrity and vitality of natural systems. In doing so, it weaves together human and non-human interests, illustrating a deeply interconnected understanding of ecological and social health (APCNF, n.d.).

Complexity

APCNF integrates economic, environmental, and climate benefits, enhancing resilience to droughts and floods. Eliminating synthetic, chemical inputs has multiple benefits, including (RySS, n.d.):

1. Higher farmer incomes: Farmers see a 56–80% increase in net income within one to two years, driven by higher productivity and lower input costs (Centre for Economic and Social Studies. 2021; Global Alliance for the Future of Food 2023).
2. Strong return-on-investment (ROI) for the government: Every $1 USD invested yields $6–8 USD in public benefits (Global Alliance for the Future of Food 2024).
3. Water savings: Natural farming reduces water usage by up to 50%, enhancing resilience to drought.
4. Biodiversity gains: Earthworm populations increased sevenfold; bird populations—absent in chemically treated fields—rose by 55%.
5. Fewer pests, lower crop losses: Natural Farming fields report a 66.4% reduction of pests and a 60% increase in beneficial insects. In chili farming, pest-related losses dropped from 60% (conventional) to under 10% (natural). 
6. Climate resilience: Crops exhibit greater resistance to floods and droughts, outperforming conventional systems.
7. Lower emissions: Emissions per crop decline by 29.7–91.1%, making natural farming one of the most scalable and cost-effective carbon sequestration strategies among regenerative agriculture practices (Rosenstock, T. S., Mayzelle, M., Namoi, N., & Fantke, P. 2020).

Individual & collective agency

Transforming traditional farming at a state-wide scale requires more than policy shifts—it demands a shift in agency. APCNF facilitates village-wide transformation through its three-pronged approach (NITI Aayog, n.d.): 

1. Democratic participation: Women’s self-help groups (SHGs) and their federations, and farmer institutions play a central role in planning, implementation, and monitoring the program. 
2. Farmer-driven knowledge sharing: A farmer-to-farmer extension system, led by Community Resource Persons (CRPs), provides continuous training and hands-on support.  
3. Scalability through saturation: The program drives total conversion, systematically expanding from villages to clusters, Mandals, and eventually the entire state, ensuring that all farms and practices adopt natural farming. 

Uncertainty 

APCNF acknowledges the complexities and unknowns of agricultural transformation. Instead of imposing rigid guidelines, the program builds in flexibility and prioritizes farmer-led experimentation (NITI Aayog, n.d.).

In the first year, farmers apply natural farming to only a small portion of their land while continuing conventional farming on the rest. After observing the results of a first crop—in terms of costs, yields, resilience, health impacts—they compare outcomes and discuss findings with peers. With this evidence-based approach, farmers make their own decisions about scaling-up, fostering organic program growth and peer-driven expansion (NITI Aayog, n.d.). This bottom-up, adaptive model not only reduces risk but empowers farmers to become champions of change, accelerating the shift toward sustainable, resilient agriculture.

Each village receives five to seven years of support, ensuring 85% farm conversion (NITI Aayog, n.d.). Key to this process is farmer-led capacity building. Each village is assigned two to three Community Resource Persons (CRPs)—master farmers provide hands-on support for up to five years (NITI Aayog, n.d.). At the end of this period, a new cohort of internal Community Resource Persons (iCRPs) is selected from among the village’s best practitioners. These local famer-trainers, with a target ratio of one iCRP per 100 farmers, ensure long-term sustainability and expansion.

Justice

Although 85% of rural women work in agriculture, they often lack land rights and decision-making power (RySS, n.d.). APCNF places women at the heart of its program, driving community-wide transformation. While CRPs and iCRPs focus on technology transfer, women’s Self-Help Groups (SHGs) and Village Organizations (VOs) mobilize farmers, oversee farming plans, and foster knowledge-sharing, financial empowerment, and broader participation. By pooling resources to: support natural farming transitions; assist tenant farmers; and, promote collective adoption (through dialogue, kitchen gardens, shared input production and on-farm collaboration), they ensure long-term sustainability (RySS, n.d.).

Transformation: A global agroecology model

Erik Solheim, former head of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), said that APCNF represents “an unprecedented transformation” in sustainable agriculture, crucial for climate, biodiversity, and food security (UNEP, 2018). In 2024, the APCNF won the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity, recognized as “the world’s largest agroecology program,” reaching over a million smallholder farmers, predominantly women, across 500,000 hectares in the state with the eventual aim to reach all eight million farmer households in Andhra Pradesh within a decade (Gulbenkian, 2024).

Nationally, APCNF has been designated a National Resource Organization under India’s National Rural Livelihoods Mission, supporting 12 states in integrating SHG models into their natural farming transitions (RySS, n.d.). Currently, APCNF is developing guidelines to make natural farming a key performance indicator for village organizations, further embedding agroecology into India’s rural development strategy (RySS, n.d.).

Key Insights and Lessons Learned

APCNF stands out as a model for systemic risk response, integrating criteria relating to Justice, Uncertainty, Individual and Collective Agency, and Transformation. APCNF systematically addresses a range of systemic risks that threaten to spill over into multiple systems, providing an exemplary model of the complexity criteria. APCNF attributes its success to a strategic, farmer-led scaling approach, with key lessons to note for systemic risk response efforts (NITI Aayog, n.d.): 

1. Enable a whole-of society approach to achieve results at scale: Everyone has a role to play as shown by the success of farmer-to-farmer extension system for peer-driven adoption, women’s self-help groups as anchors of social mobilization, and a whole-village approach ensuring collective adoption.
2. Identify key actors for long-term success: Strong government backing from the state and agriculture department is key to ensure enhanced reach.
3. Create a diverse data and evidence base: Scientific validation in the form of commissioned studies on natural farming’s socio-economic and environmental impacts, coupled with ICT-based community monitoring for data-driven implementation, grows the evidence base to demonstrate impact, effectiveness, and transformation.
4. Include a wide range of strategies and sufficient time to achieve behavioural change: despite rapid expansion, the program’s third-quarter independent review found that scaling to all farmers in Andhra Pradesh will require new strategies—particularly to address labor shortages, field staff vacancies, and pricing mechanisms for natural farming products (RySS, 2023, p. xvi). A key challenge remains the time-intensive nature of behavioral change, according to one field interview: “Challenges to the program include the time required to achieve deep behavioral change from farmer to farmer which can take 3–5 years per farmer. For such long-term change to occur, it requires knowledge transfer, learning by doing from one farmer to another with requisite data in order to convince farmers to do so on a greater scale. Cash transfers do not facilitate deep transformation, instead resources are needed in the long-term to be able to provide the support services to promote learning by doing” (field interview, October 14, 2024).