Do Birds Return to Agricultural Landscapes through Adoption of Natural Farming Practices? A Comparison of Natural Farming vs. Chemical Farming in Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

The global decline in farmland bird populations in India is often ignored. The overuse of agrochemicals in farming is the root cause of all these catastrophic results. There is ample evidence in the literature that transitioning to agroecological practices may reverse this trend. We anticipated that the bird population visiting natural farming-Andhra Pradesh Community managed Natural Farming (APCNF), a novel farming approach popular in India, will increase. The study used nested design to compare the number of bird visitations in natural farming versus chemical farming to determine whether natural farming can enhance the bird numbers and diversity. Furthermore, we analyzed the bird species visits to natural and chemical farms in different agroecological zones in Andhra Pradesh, the southernmost state of India. We used the point count survey approach to count the birds on comparable farms. MANOVA and non-parametric analysis are used to examine the findings. The bird species were ranked using a Likert scale. The results show that the average bird population visiting natural vs. chemical farms varies significantly at the 0.05 level of significance, and the bird species visiting both natural farming fields and chemical farms varies between geographies and time interval.