National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) is an apex development financial institution in India, headquartered at Mumbai, with regional offices all over India. The Bank has been entrusted with matters concerning policy, planning and operations in the field of agriculture and other economic and innovative activities in rural areas in India.

Smt. Padma Raghunathan, the Chief General Manager, NABARD, Tamil Nadu Region, along with Mr. V. Ravishankar, Assistant General Manager – District Development, NABARD, Villupuram District, visited the AHAR – Agro-Homeopathy for Sustainable Agriculture experimental plots at Matrikunj on the May 21, 2019. The AHAR Project is being supported by NABARD for a period of one year. The project will validate the use of homoeopathy medicines in agriculture in lieu of chemical fertilizers and pesticides so that the agriculture produce is free from poisonous, harmful chemicals and the objective is also to make agriculture affordable for farmers and safe for consumers. Currently, experiments on Bhindi (okra/ladies finger) crop are going on at Matrikunj organic farm of Sri Aurobindo Society and the Chief General Manager along with her team visited the farm to see the progress of the project’s implementation.

Dr. P. Pachegaonkar, the Chief Investigator from SAS, explained the project and its objectives, updated her with the main results collected so far and also elucidated what would be done in the second and third seasons. Project team members from Sri Aurobindo Society, including Dr. F. Jayachandran, Ms. Shalini Aravindan, Mr. Baburam and Mr. Raghunath T. P., were also present during the visit and added to the discussions.

The CGM examined the crops on the experimental plots and appreciated the work carried out so far and requested the team to make a full-fledged documentation of the project so far and share the same with NABARD.