We had a marvelous discussion in our recent event, in which Vijay Kumar Thallam and his team at RySS (and colleagues at the Land and Leadership Initiative) shared the exciting story of a program that has helped 1.8 million farmers - in Andhra Pradesh, India - make the transition to natural farming methods, in ways that are productive and profitable.
The workshop was a kickoff event for an upcoming course.
With widespread disruption of production and transport of synthetic fertilizers due to the war on Iran - and increasing awareness of the ecological effects of fertilizer use - the world needs examples of large-scale farmer-led transitions away from synthetic fertilizers, using methods that don’t collapse farm production or produce widespread famine.
The Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) initiative is one of the strongest examples of success.
APCNF’s farmers replace synthetic fertilizers (as well as GMO seeds and pesticides) with cutting-edge agroecological approaches that include intensely diverse cover crops, natural biostimulants, foliar sprays and seed pelletization to support healthy plant growth and soil biology, and year-round food production for people, pollinators, and grazing animals.
These extremely low-cost methods use local seeds and ingredients from within the village, unhook farmers from the debts and dependencies of conventional/corporate agriculture, and result in far higher net profits directly to the farmer with little to no loss in yield, even in the first couple of years.
These methods also boost populations of beneficial insects, and birds; increase the health of both farmers and consumers; and provide dramatic local cooling effects and increased groundwater supplies.
Vijay Kumar describes the desperate conditions among farmers in Andhra Pradesh before this project, and then outlines the community organizing (mostly by rural Women’s Self Help Economic Groups practicing mutual aid) that made this project able to scale quickly (from 40,000 farmers in 2016, to 1.8 million in 2026) without any cash incentives or promises of market premiums.
Vijay Kumar traces the development of the innovations used by these farmers, and the scientists that inspired them. He also describes the cutting-edge strategies and research findings that the growing community of farmer scientists are working on.
Kumar’s vision is to transition all 6 million farmer households in the state by 2035. He is also championing replication and scaling Natural Farming in 22 other states in India and in 2 other countries: Zambia and Sri Lanka.
Didi Pershouse and Henry Nichols of the Land and Leadership Initiative provide context with a short historical and socioeconomic overview, describing:
The history of fertilizer production and use, and its relationship to weapons and wars
How the current political situation has disrupted fertilizer production and transport
How this is compounding a global food system that is already unworkable
The “Green Revolution” and its unintended consequences on soils, water, farmer debt and dependency, etc.
Corporate profiteering on the backs of farmers
The importance of networks and organizing: to enable a widespread, safe, rapid farmer-led transition to agroecological, regenerative, and natural farming approaches.
Here’s where you can sign up to express your interest in the upcoming course as we get it underway.
About Our Presenters:
Vijay Kumar Thallam is Executive Vice Chairman of the Indian non-profit Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RYSS), and an advisor on Agriculture and Cooperation to the State Government of Andhra Pradesh. In his 40 years in government, he has spent more than 30 years in leading large scale community mobilization and promotion of livelihoods of rural women, tribal communities and farmers.
He served a record 10 years as CEO of the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty in Andhra Pradesh and led the mobilization and empowerment of 11.5 million rural poor women into thrift and credit based self-help groups, so they could move out of poverty. Since 2015, he has been leading the climate resilient, A.P Community managed Natural Farming (APCNF) programme of the Government of Andhra Pradesh.
Vijay Kumar was the Vice Chair (Production) of the Champions Network for the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021. He and his team at Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS) accepted the Gulbekian Prize for Humanity in 2024, and the APCNF project is one of four finalists for the Food Planet Prize of 2026 (to be announced in June).
Henry Nichols works as an editor and researcher at the Land and Leadership Initiative. He has worked with Rural Vermont and the People’s Agroecology School of Vermont. He is an anti-war and agroecological organizer, and believes that farmers and other workers should have the opportunity to work in ways that benefit people and the planet, without being forced to use destructive chemicals or build tools of war against humans and other species. In 2025 he helped Thetford, Vermont become the first municipality in the United States to adopt the Apartheid Free Communities pledge.
Didi Pershouse (that’s me!) is the founder of the Land and Leadership Initiative. She is well known as an innovative educator and writer, and her facilitator’s guide Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function is used in over 90 countries.
She has written a field training manual for the UN-FAO Farmer Field School Program and the Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming Initiative in India, involving 1.8 million smallholder farmers. She was a contributing author to The Climate Emergency: How Africa Can Survive and Thrive; Climate Change and Creation Care; and Health in the Anthropocene. She was one of five speakers at the United Nations-FAO World Soil Day in 2017.
She became deeply involved in the intersection of food systems and health systems while providing rural health care for two decades at The Center for Sustainable Medicine, and wrote The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and Microbial Communities.
She serves on the Planning Commission for her town, is a board supervisor for the White River Natural Resources Conservation District, and is on the board of directors of Regenerate Earth, Soil Carbon Coalition and the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition. While serving on the state appointed Payment for Ecosystem Services and Soil Health Working Group, she helped to reorient the program back to its public roots. She led a successful effort to conserve the Zebedee Headwaters Wetland while serving as a Vermont Conservation Commissioner.
She is on the Vision Council of the Global Earth Repair Convergence, and a member of the Ecosystem Restoration Alliance. She is a lineage member of the Change Agent Development Community (stewarded by the late Carol Sanford), and is seeding new communities of practice in a wisdom tradition using living systems frameworks.
She writes The Wisdom Underground on Substack.
