The Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) programme, implemented by Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS), has been awarded the prestigious 2026 Food Planet Prize.
The world’s largest environmental award, worth $1.5 million, was presented by the Curt Bergfors Foundation during a ceremony in Båstad, Sweden.
Launched in 2016, the community-led model was recognized for its monumental success in shifting agricultural practices away from synthetic chemicals. By focusing on soil science, climate resilience, and traditional knowledge, the initiative has successfully restored degraded lands while significantly reducing input costs for local cultivators.
The movement owes much of its scale to the organizational strength of 340,000 women’s self-help groups and a dedicated network of over 10,000 community resource trainers. Today, the initiative actively supports roughly 1.8 million farming families and 700,000 farmworker families across 8,000 villages in Andhra Pradesh.
Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu hailed the achievement as a “first for India,” reaffirming the state’s ambitious blueprint to transition into a 100% natural farming state by 2047. The $1.5-million grand prize will be utilized by RySS to establish more international demonstration sites, support localized toolkits, and empower “farmer scientists” to scale the model globally.
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