Socio-Economic Impact of Selected Land Shaping Techniques in Coastal Areas of Sundarbans, West Bengal

Abstract

The National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP) has been implementing sub-project on ‘Strategies for Sustainable Management of Degraded Coastal Land and Water for Enhancing Livelihood Security of Farming Communities’ in coastal areas of Sundarbans since 2009. One of the key interventions has been construction of different kind of land shaping models in farmers field to enhance cropping intensities, employment and farm income. Primary focus under these technologies has been to create on-farm reservoir for rainwater harvesting and creating the opportunities to grow multiple crops through utilization of harvested rainwater. Besides, salt tolerant rice verities and other suitable crops have been suggested to enhance the farm income. The study pertains to primary survey on farm households in South & North 24 Parganas districts of West Bengal where the NAIP project has been implemented. Results indicated that the land shaping techniques have been highly suitable for enhancing the farm income and employment in the coastal region. Such techniques are financially viable for long-term investment in the region. Farmers’ have shown keen interest to adopt these techniques in their own land. However, meeting the initial investment for construction of these techniques has been major constraints of poor farmers’ for larger adoption of these technologies. Up-scaling of these techniques to large number of farmers’ field can be made possible through converging many of the Govt. schemes, such as MGNREGA, BGREI etc, that are continuing in this region.