Crop-fish integration through land shaping models for enhancing farm income under eastern coastal region of India

Abstract

The coastal agro-ecosystem of the country occupies an area of about 10.8 million ha and are spread over the 8129 km long coastline along the Bay of Bengal in the East coast and Arabian sea in the West coast. The area is distributed among 9 States, 2 Union Territories and 2 group of Islands. The land and water resources of the coastal zone in India are rich, valuable and underutilised. Enhancing agricultural production can improve the food security and contribute to poverty reduction. Current productivity of the farming systems including agriculture and aquaculture are far below the inherent potential of the region. Agriculture under this marginal environment of coastal salinity are typically charcterised with multi-faceted problems such as waterlogged condition (during kharif season) or high salinity building up (during rabi season). Farming operation often becomes risky due to natural calamities, which increases the risk of farming or restricted the farm operation and ultimately increases the instability of farm income. The strategies for improving the farming conditions in costal salt affected areas have been focused primarily on two ways first developing salt tolerant crop varieties and second rainwater harvesting through different land shaping models. Rice is the major crops grown in both seasons (kharif and rabi) and therefore, high focus has been given on developing and dissemination of salt tolerant rice varieties by research institutes under Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). Several rice varieties have been evolved and continuous efforts are being made for larger adoption. It has been generally observed that farmers are more keen to change their rice varieties during rabi season as compared to kharif season. Preference of rice varieties during rabi (short, salt tolerant, short duration, high yielding and better quality) and and kharif (tall, long duration, non-lodging) seasons are distinctly different. Besides developing improved rice varieties, several land shaping techniques have been quite successful in enhancing farm production in the region. Land shaping techniques are changing the configuration of land through soil excavation and making suitable for water harvesting, option for multiple cropping and also reducing the soil and water salinity. These land shaping techniques, particularly the farm pond and paddy-cum-fish models, are unique technology for addressing the key challenges like land degradation (salinity), drainage congestion and scarcity of fresh water for irrigation and in turn have the potential to enhancing production, productivity, income and employment. These techniques particularly farm pond and paddy-cum-fish are financially viable and attractive proposition for the coastal region. Some of the key impediments for large-scale implementation of such interventions were marginal land holdings that too divided into several parcels, high initial investment, and presence of acid sulphate soils near surface or at shallow depth at places. For larger adoption of these technologies need to address some key issues like socio-economic constraints, some of which can be addressed by research level (land configuration, soil quality) some other at policy level (incentives). Community based rainwater harvesting as well as common pool wasteland may be encouraged in this direction.