Maharashtra has moved to the forefront of India’s sustainable agriculture transition with a high-level State Consultation designed to build a unified, statewide strategy for natural and residue-free farming. The consultation brought together senior policymakers, scientists, progressive farmers, certification bodies, market players, and implementing agencies—an unusually broad coalition that underscores the state’s intent to institutionalise natural farming at scale.

Convened under the Balasaheb Thackeray Agribusiness and Rural Transformation (SMART) Project, Maharashtra Institution for Transformation (MITRA), Maharashtra Village Social Transformation Foundation (VSTF), and Palladium Consultancy Pvt. Ltd., the platform served as a convergence point for policy design, field-level insights, certification standards, and market expectations. The state’s agriculture leadership signalled that the next phase of natural farming will hinge not just on ecological goals but on robust markets, cohesive value chains, and a re-engineered certification and traceability framework.

The policy roadmap presented at the consultation outlined a multi-layered agenda: accelerating ecologically regenerative practices across Maharashtra’s diverse agro-climatic zones; ensuring income resilience through assured market linkages and strengthened value chains; and improving soil, water, and biodiversity indices with cluster-specific, evidence-backed interventions. The strategy places significant emphasis on establishing seamless certification and residue-testing systems, expanding institutional capacities across FPOs, SHGs, universities, and Block Resource Centres, strengthening long-term research and protocols, and embedding technology, youth participation, and sharper governance and monitoring tools into the natural farming ecosystem.

“Scaling natural farming requires more than intent—it needs structural reform. Maharashtra can lead by enabling tailored agri-finance for NF, assured markets and prices, strong risk-mitigation frameworks, and policy validation from Animal Husbandry. Integrating natural farming into school and university curricula, ensuring seamless certification, converging existing schemes, and creating dedicated NF market zones on the lines of Shabari Corporation will be pivotal for long-term impact,” said Suraj Mandhare, Commissioner of Agriculture, Maharashtra.

A key message emerging from the consultation was the need to fix foundational gaps. Natural farming programmes, experts noted, have struggled nationally due to weak evaluations, persistent implementation challenges, and the absence of a structured supply chain or credible certification architecture. “Maharashtra has immense potential, but scalability depends on closing systemic gaps and building a comprehensive ecosystem,” said Parashram Patil, Senior Advisor at MITRA.

By signalling structural reforms, institutional coordination, and market alignment, Maharashtra is positioning natural farming not as a niche movement but as a long-term economic and ecological strategy—one backed by systems, science, and state capacity rather than sentiment alone.