Subhash Palekar

Subhash Palekar, born on 1 July 1949, is an Indian agriculturist who developed and promoted the farming approach now called Subhash Palekar Natural Farming, formerly known as Zero Budget Natural Farming. He was born in the village of Belora in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra into a farming family and took a bachelor's degree in agriculture at the Shri Shivaji Agriculture College in Amravati. After farming with chemical inputs from 1972 he saw yields begin to decline after 1985, studied forest vegetation and tribal ways of life, and tested forest principles on his own farm from 1989 to 1995 in 154 research projects, which became the basis of his method of manures and agroecology. He has written more than 20 books in Marathi, four in English and three in Hindi and has given workshops across India. He received the Padma Shri in 2016 and in 2017 was appointed advisor to the state of Andhra Pradesh on zero budget farming.