Impact of Integrated Farming System in Ramanagara District: An Analysis

Abstract

An attempt was made to assess the impact of technological interventions initiated by KVK, Ramanagara under Integrated Farming System (IFS) among farmers. A great majority of the stakeholders lacked knowledge about improved varieties of ragi, redgram, horse gram, cowpea & foxtail millet. In order to increase the yield and productivity of these crops, improved varieties were inducted to farmers. Farmers were stimulated to go for cultivation of different vegetables in their backyards primarily for house consumption through introduction of nutrition kit developed by Indian Institute of Horticulture Research, Bangalore. Farmers expressed that this intervention reduced the drudgery of going out and buying the vegetables to the extent of 20 % and on an average each family produced about 80 kg of vegetables generating average revenue of ` 1026 per season. Improved giriraja chicks were introduced to farmers wherein there was 67 % increase in the number of birds after three years while each family could earn on an average of ` 6200/- from chicken. Considering egg production, each family could earn average net income of ` 6800/- at the end of three years. Out of one sheep inducted, it is worthy to note that each family could maintain an average of 5 sheep’s per family after three years. At this rate it could be articulated that ` 13,750/- was the average net income gained by each family from the sheep meat. The wilt incidence in redgram could be controlled to the extent of 75 % through introduction of trichoderma subsequent to which there was additional increase in income of ` 4300/- per ha. Promotion of improved fodder crops namely CO-3 & CO-4 resulted in 6.6 % increase in milk yield.