Diversification of the existing farming systems under marginal household conditions in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh

Abstract

The farmer has to be assured of a regular income for a reasonable standard of living by including other enterprises and efficient management of on- and off-farm resources. Himachal Pradesh has limited scope of the extension of cultivated area, because of its topographic features; the only scope for the agriculture growth is increasing productivity of high cash crops and spread the pace of diversification with different agro climatic condition in the state. The present study was conducted in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh to characterize and diversify the farming systems. For characterization of farming systems, data were collected from 120 farmers selected randomly from 12 villages of four blocks namely, Baijnath, Kangra, Nagrota Bagwan and Nurpur. On enterprises based characterization, four types of farms were identified. These were crops+ livestock, crops+livestock+vegetables, crops+vegetables+bee keeping and vegetables+livestock. The large portion of farmers (marginal farmers) followed crops+livestock+vegetables farming system (65.83%) followed by crops+livestock (28.33%). Crops+livestock+beekeeing and vegetables+livestock farming systems were also adopted by the negligible percentage (0.83%) of the farm households. On an average, farmers of different categories (Marginal, small, medium and large) generally used higher seed rates of maize (27.57 kg/ha), wheat (111.11 kg/ha) and paddy (38.18 kg/ha) than the recommended one i.e. 20, 100 and 25 kg/ha, respectively and the average use of NPK in the form of urea and IFFCO was much lower than the recommended dose for all the crops. Twenty four on-farm trials were undertaken to harness the fruits of diversification during 2014-15 and 2015-16. The households were identified based on the benchmark survey already undertaken during 2012-13 under the aegis of On-farm Farming System Research Programme of AICRP-IFS. The benchmark survey results revealed that a net income under field crops alone, Field crops+dairy and crops+dairy+goat/sheep was and#8377; 9230, and#8377; 22465 and and#8377; 20147/household, respectively. After two years of intervention, the income/household increased to and#8377; 18696, and#8377; 27175 and and#8377; 28964, respectively. The intervention cost on field crops (Complete package of practices and vegetable seedlings), field crops + dairy (Package of practices, vegetable seedlings, mineral mixture supplementation and grading sieve) and field crops + dairy + goat/sheep (Package of practices, vegetable seedlings, mineral mixture supplementation and grading sieve) during the first year of study was and#8377; 3281, 3599 and 3605/household, respectively. During the second year the corresponding intervention cost was and#8377; 3212, 3465 and 4153/household, respectively. The study results inferred that the interventions at each aspect of crop and animal diversification increased the income of all the households. The sustainable diversified farming systems were seen highly profitable and the appropriate diversification of components increased the production per unit area and overall income of the farm. newline