Agriculture Scientist’s Many Burdens: A Glimpse of Efforts in Land Use Planning, Waste Recycling, Food Storage Design, Managing Farmer Psychology and Other Eclectic Pursuits

Prasada, Pahan; Pushpakumara, Gamini; Silva, Ranjith Premalal De

doi:10.1007/978-981-15-3673-1_1

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…There is a clear disconnect between the scholarly discourse on resource utilization in agricultural sciences and the domains of land-use patterns and land-use policies. This discrepancy is particularly evident in the agrarian societies of developing nations, where agriculture holds a deep-rooted, ancestral significance and serves as a pillar to sustain food security and livelihoods [21]. Consequently, the analytical lenses of 'transaction cost and political economy' and 'ecosystem services' from natural resources may fall short in explaining the future agricultural land use in marginal ecosystems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Resource Recycling and Land Management to Upscale Zero-Tillage Potato Cultivation in the Coastal Indian Sundarbans

Goswami,

Roy,

Gangopadhyay

et al. 2024

Land

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Upscaling sustainable intensification (SI) technologies is crucial to enhancing the resilience of fragile farming systems and vulnerable livelihoods of smallholder farmers. It is also critical to shape the future land-use and land-cover changes in a region. Zero-tillage potato cultivation (ZTPC), introduced as an SI intervention in parts of the Indian Sundarbans, has demonstrated promises of rapid upscaling, and thus, changes in the seasonal land-use pattern in the region. This study aims to understand the socioecological complexity of farming systems to comprehend how the nascent stage of ZTPC thrives at the farm level and what preconditions are necessary to upscale them. The objectives are to analyse the farm resource recycling pattern in ZTPC, and map and simulate its system’s complexity to strategize ZTPC upscaling in the region. The analysis of farm resource recycling data reveals that ZTPC stability hinges on managing trade-offs in resource allocations, specifically involving straw, organic manure, sweet water, and family labour. The decision to manage such trade-offs depends on farm type characterizations by their landholdings, distance from the homestead, pond, and cattle ownership, competing crops, and family composition. Using a semiquantitative systems model developed through fuzzy cognitive mapping, the study underscores the significance of effective training, input support, enterprise diversification by introducing livestock, timely tuber supply, access to critical irrigation, and capacity building of local institutions as the essential preconditions to sustain and upscale ZTPC. This research contributes a systems perspective to predict agricultural land use within technology transfer initiatives, providing insights into how farm- and extra-farm factors influence resource allocations for ZTPC. Public extension offices must understand the trade-offs associated with straw, organic matter, and harvested water and design differentiated supports for different farm types. The most compelling interventions to upscale ZTPC includes farm diversification by introducing livestock through institutional convergence, pragmatic agroforestry initiatives to enhance on-farm biomass and fuel production, building awareness and integrating alternative energy use to save straw and cow dung, building social capital to ensure access to sweet irrigation water, and developing and/or strengthening farmer collectives to ensure the supply of quality tuber and marketing of farm produce.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%