Pioneer Farmers: Agri-sustainability through Farmer FIRST Approach

Abstract

The 'Farmer FIRST Programme’ was a unique initiative of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) that focussed on farmers’ Farm, Innovations, Resources, Science and Technology (FIRST) where farmers played centric role for research problem identification, prioritization and conduct of experiments and its management in field conditions. The major target groups were small and marginal farmers including women. The problems of farmers related to agricultural production were discussed in details in farmer-scientist interface and those problems were addressed with best suitable interventions covered under different modules. Organizing training programmes/exposure visits for farmers to enrich technical knowledge; supplying superior quality germplasm of various crops/livestock/poultry strains/fishes; using soil test-based fertilizers; managing nutrients through leaf colour chart; practising line transplanting in paddy; using mulching for soil moisture conservation; using poly house technology; adopting sprinkler/drip irrigation; using trellis system in horticultural crops production; managing crops, livestock, poultry and fishes scientifically; selecting appropriate enterprises, establishing marketing channels for agricultural produces were among the major interventions adopted under this programme. As a result, agricultural production was increased substantially under crop- and horticulture-based module (both varied from 20-200%), natural resource management module (ranged between 12 and 100%), livestock module (varied from 15-150%), enterprise-based module (ranged from 12-100%) and integrated farming system-based module (ranged between 14 and 200%) which fetched higher income to the farmers than before adopting interventions.