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For improving production and marketing of agricultural produce, group approach can act as a panacea. In this endeavour, the present study carried out in the Raichur district, has reported the impact of formation of commodity-specific Farmers Interest Groups (FIGs) for pigeonpea and sweet orange crops. After formation of FIGs, several production and marketing interventions were carried like capacity building, awareness generation, knowledge enhancement, institutional linkage development, etc. The impact of FIG for pigeonpea has revealed the total additional benefit to farmers due to savings in cost and additional net returns from output share amounted, on an average over 2 years of 2010-11 and 2011-12, to ` 23,991 per farmer or ` 5,756 per acre. The impact of FIG for sweet orange has shown additional benefit of 7899 per ton (78.50%) over the private dealers of Bangalore market and ` 8456 per tonne (89.50%) over pre-harvest contractors by selling through Safal institutional market. Therefore, promotion of FIGs and their linking to institutional agencies for input supply, output marketing and technology transfer would result in improvement in livelihood of farmers, leading to economic sustainability. Therefore, the study has suggested to bring out a comprehensive policy with institutional framework and adequate incentives for promotion of FIGs for agricultural and horticultural crops in the country.

Rice occupies a pivotal place in Indian agriculture and it contributes about 13 per cent of annual agriculture GDP and provides 43 per cent calorie requirement for more than 70 per cent of Indian population. This study was conducted in Thungabhadra area of Karnataka and it is also called as ‘Rice Bowl of Karnataka’, since it occupies nearly 65 per cent of total (3.63 lakh ha) area of paddy in Karnataka. In this area, paddy-paddy system is the predominant cropping system. Paddy crop residues include any biomass left in the field after grains and other economic components have been harvested. Crop residues are also a principal source of carbon, which constitutes about 40 per cent of the total biomass on dry weight basis. Crop residues were considered as precious commodity because it can be used as a feed for the fodder and mulching for various crops and must never be considered as waste. The paddy residues are typically burnt on-farm across different regions of this area. The problem is more severe in the head and mid region of this area, particularly in the mechanized harvesting in paddy-paddy cropping system. There are four methods of residue management practices, these are as removal of straw and burning of stubble, burning of straw and stubble, removal of straw and incorporation of stubble and incorporation of straw and stubble among, which removal of straw and burning of stubble (42.45 %) is the major one. The main reasons for burning of residues are low cost and labour scarcity. Total cost of cultivation of paddy per acre was found to be marginally lower burning of straw and stubbles method as compared (₹ 38411/acre) to incorporating straw and stubbles (₹ 41845/acre) method.

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