“It feels like we’re doing something good.” Mapping farmer perceptions of zero budget natural farming onto crop yields in Andhra Pradesh

• Public messaging about natural farming adoption relies on success stories. • Success stories focus on income, yield, and reduced expenditure. • Farmer storytelling with participatory photography can reveal other motivations. • Farmer adoption is also influenced by independence, memory, and legacy. • Soil and social sciences working together can tell a more complex story of adoption. India is a leader in the transition to natural farming, and the state of Andhra Pradesh is at the forefront. This interdisciplinary study seeks to understand the motivations behind Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) adoption in two districts in different climatic zones in Andhra Pradesh (Anantapur and Visakhapatnam). Public messaging about ZBNF generally relies on success stories based on increases in yield and income, with a reduction on expenditures. We use participatory photography to understand subjective farmer stories about natural farming and map these responses onto field experiments measuring crop yield to reveal a more complex range of drivers behind adoption. By studying the contents and effects of subjective farmer stories and comparing the yields of natural farming plots with organic and conventional plots, we show that natural farming yields support public messaging in some contexts where the transition is taking place, but less so in others. While the mainstream messaging about the benefits of natural farming is certainly a motivating factor for adoption, there are also many unquantifiable subjective gains perceived by farmers inclusive of memory, legacy, independence, and a rejection of industrialized agriculture, which also drive adoption. Understanding these unquantifiable subjective gains, and how they connect to ZBNF innovations in the fields, can improve two-way rural communication about natural farming and drive future context-specific research.