NITI Aayog’s persistent efforts resulted in amendment in the collaborative work plan of ICAR and ICRAF (World Agroforestry) for the year 2021–25 under the existing Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to include a project on natural farming on 9 June 2021. This project on “restoration of degraded lands through agroforestry and other ecological approaches including natural farming” aim to investigate and mainstream the principles for using agroforestry systems and other agro-ecological approaches, including natural farming in integrated land and soil fertility management.
The objectives of this project include transforming diverse livelihood systems through various agroecological approaches to enhance food production and increase delivery of ecosystem services at the landscape-scale levels. It also intends to develop an understanding of the nature and the process of land degradation and related soil fertility problems at different scales in various agro-ecologies. Analysing the impacts, synergies and the trade-offs of the agroforestry systems and validation of suitable agroforestry models for improvements of soil productivity and rehabilitation of degraded lands is another objective of the project. The expected output of the study is the scientific and dependable results on utility and impacts of agro ecological approaches including natural farming in integrated land and soil fertility management by seeking the expertise of ICRAF.