No abstract

What do different stakeholders think of the changing trends in agricultural practices and related policies? We answer this and related questions with respect to Karnataka, an Indian state showing signs of agrarian distress. Using the participatory impact assessment (PIA) method involving farmers, researchers and voluntary workers, we assess the impact of recent policy-driven farming practices. The land use functions (LUFs) framework, which resembles the ecosystem services framework, was adapted in the PIA to address multidimensional sustainability in agricultural landscapes. During the PIAs, participants ranked LUFs in the order of their perceived importance and projected the impact of different practice-policy scenarios on chosen indicators corresponding to each LUF. Three farming scenarios, namely organic, conventional (chemically intensive) and mixed input practices were assessed for their projected impacts on selected indicators of each LUF. The LUF ranking reveals that while stakeholder priorities vary, they remain contrasting to the common policy focus of profit and productivity maximisation. Farmers value family's health and water access the most and financial services the least as functions of their land. Indicator scoring in the PIA revealed that participants rated organic practices as the most beneficial, conventional scenario as detrimental and the now prevailing mixed inputs scenario as having little impact.

Over 56% of the population of Karnataka state in India depends on agriculture for its livelihood. A majority of these are small and marginal farmers, with land under 2 ha, responsible for nearly half the food production in the state. The increasing rate of farmers' suicides in the state is reportedly fuelled among others, by increasing input costs, crop failure and accumulating debt. This triggered several policy measures, intended to improve the sustainability of farm livelihoods including those promoting organic practices in farming. The paper presents the results of a multicriteria analysis conducted to comprehend the effects of two different practice-policy scenarios on smallholders in Karnataka-one scenario 'with policy' (WP) to support organic agricultural practices and the other a 'business as usual' (BAU) scenario that continues to stress on market-based, synthetic inputs for cultivation. The paper integrates results from quantitative and participatory techniques to compare and project effects on ecological, economic and socio-cultural indicators. Ecological and economic indicators in WP are projected to be significantly higher than BAU in a majority of the study sites, while socio-cultural indicators show mixed outcomes, depending on regional and social characteristics. Across the study sites, small and rain-fed farms are benefitted better in WP compared to large and irrigated farms, respectively. Among small and rain-fed farms, soil fertility, water quality, agro-diversity, net income and freedom from indebtedness improve considerably, while there is slight reduction in collective activities and no perceivable change in land-based subsistence.

Agriculture including crop production and animal husbandry provides for the food, fodder, and fuel needs in rural regions of many countries such as India. Using the knowledge pertinent to complex mixed cropping-livestock systems at the village level, the goal of this study is to develop a rational method for crop selection, such that the capacity for production of food, fodder and biomass fuel can be examined under various cropping patterns.An agricultural survey is carried out in November 2007 for three villages located in the dryland agro-ecozone of Karnataka State, India. Various demands, including human food energy and protein requirements, and constraints, including land area, are modeled for optimal cropping pattern.A clear recommendation of the study is that a substantial shift in village-wide area planted to cereal crops, in all cases over 50%, is necessary to satisfy human and livestock demands. Additionally, there are visible and growing population pressures on the resources in the dryland, semi-arid regions of India, and these strategies will need to be supplemented by improved agronomic practices directed toward increased productivity.

No abstract