Integrated Farming System Models Development for Small and Marginal Households for Sustainable Production and Livelihood Improvement in India: An Overview

Abstract

At present, 121 million agricultural holdings are in India; out of these 99 million holdings are small and marginal (87%). Small holdings are not well suited to farm mechanization, coupled with poor economic condition of farming community and lack of resources; these factors are exclusively responsible for the slow growth of Indian Agricultural. Hence, there is immense need to develop area specific integrated farming system models to resolve multi-dimensional problems prevailing related to agriculture and allied sectors. Integrated farming systems approach is one of the most powerful tools for enhancing roductivity, profitability, nutritional security, livelihood improvement, employment generation and sustainability of the farm households, particularly small and marginal farming communities, presently they have constituted more than 87% of the total farm households. In India, increasing population demands coupled with decreasing availability of farm resources resulted declining in productivity which warrants an immediate attention of researchers to tackle these problems and there is urgent need to reorient agriculture research programs from individualistic enterprise approach to need developed holistic approach of integrated farming system. The concept of integrated farming system research integrates various enterprises and resources (inputs) at the farm level into consideration for planning production of crops, selecting cropping systems and combining various enterprises to develop integrated farming systems having sustainable agriculture production systems. Similarly, inclusion of horticulture, dairy farming, bee keeping, fisheries, poultry farming, sheep and goat rearing, sericulture, mushroom cultivation under two or three tier system of integrated farming can give substantial additional high energy food without affecting production of food grains. Soil, water, climate, marketing, labour, transport and local demands are the main criteria to select the farming systems for any working place. Moreover, integrated farming system is a biologically integration system, which integrates mechanism into farming activities to achieve utmost replacement of off- farm inputs and sustain farm profits through decease of costs of production and augment productivity of the entire system towards vertical horizon. As regards to livelihood security, the IFS approach adopted in the model met almost all the homegrown family demands of cereals, pulses, oil, fruit, milk, meat, vegetables, and value-added products. Moreover, integrated farming systems also pave the needed socially acceptable, environmental hygiene and economically viable to large growing population of India. Therefore, now the need of develop an agro-ecology based integrated farming system which would augment soil health, ecological balance, employment generation and fertilizers cost reduction through recycled farmbased by-products. Further, most of the inputs being used in agriculture becoming costlier and go out of reaches to common man which results in farming becoming unviable and unsustainable enterprise particular to small and marginal households of India. Hence, it is clear that adoption of allied enterprises enhanced the net return sizably over the arable farming. Thus, whole farming system approach is very constructive in solving the various problems of farmers in India.