A government-backed farming programme from Andhra Pradesh has won the 2026 Food Planet Prize — the world’s largest environmental award for food systems — beating more than 1,000 nominations from across the globe.
The Andhra Pradesh Community Managed Natural Farming programme, known as APCNF, received the $1.5 million prize in Båstad, Sweden, on June 2. The Curt Bergfors Foundation presented the award for leading one of the largest transitions to chemical-free agriculture ever recorded.
What APCNF Is
Rythu Sadhikara Samstha, an agency under Andhra Pradesh’s agriculture department, launched the programme in 2016. Its goal was simple: help farmers abandon synthetic inputs and return to nature-based methods rooted in soil science and traditional knowledge.
A decade later, 1.8 million farming families across the state have joined the movement. More than 340,000 women’s self-help groups drive farmer training on the ground. Over 10,000 community resource persons — more than 60 percent of them women — support farmer-to-farmer learning across 8,000 villages.
What the Jury Said
Professor Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, co-chair of the Food Planet Prize jury, said APCNF had done what most programmes only promise. “APCNF demonstrates how nature-positive farming can be implemented across entire communities and regions,” she said. “It shows how the future of agriculture can be built by working with nature rather than against it.”
Three other finalists — Conscious Kitchen of the United States, NoPalm Ingredients of the Netherlands, and the Savanna Institute of the United States — each received $150,000.
The Human Scale
For Kuruda Radha, a farmer from Allapattu village in Alluri Sitharama Raju district, the award meant something personal. “We have been eating chemical-free food grown in our own garden,” she said.
T. Vijay Kumar, Executive Vice Chairman of Rythu Sadhikara Samstha, accepted the prize on behalf of those on the ground. “We accept this award for 1.8 million farm families, 700,000 farmworker families, and the 340,000 women’s self-help groups driving this transformation,” he said.
What Comes Next
Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu called the recognition a first for India. “We would like to make Andhra Pradesh 100 percent natural by 2047,” he said, “restoring our resources, rejuvenating our farmlands, and healing the planet.”
APCNF’s methods are already spreading. The programme now shares its model across 22 Indian states and in Sri Lanka and Zambia.
The prize money will fund new demonstration sites, country-specific implementation toolkits, research partnerships, and expanded training for farmer scientists — smallholders who design and document their own field experiments.
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