Development of Integrated Farming System Model—A Step towards Achieving Biodiverse, Resilient and Productive Green Economy in Agriculture for Small Holdings in India

Abstract

The agrarian communities of South Asia are dominated by small and marginal farmers (<2.0 ha operational holdings) and are confronted with manifold challenges of lower productivity, income, and resource degradation. For optimized and efficient resource use, a shift from business as usual towards green economy is imperative. Therefore, a study to address these challenges, through integrating diverse crops and allied enterprises under an integrated farming system (IFS) model was carried out. We hypothesized that a standardized IFS model with appropriate location-specific modules will have higher system output, income, and lesser environmental footprints. Vegetable cultivation (VC), protected vegetable cultivation (PVC), field crops (FC), mushroom production (MP), and beekeeping (BK) were evaluated under the IFS model, with objectives to optimize the coherent use of available farm resources with enhancing system productivity and profitability. Among the FC module, the system productivity increased from 21–247% of different cropping systems, over the predominant rice–wheat system (RWS). The integration of different components, viz., VP + PVC + FC + AHS + MP + BK + VC in M10 resulted in achieving the maximum water productivity (6.72 kg/m3), energy productivity (1.50 kg/MJ), net return (9446 USD/ha), employment opportunities (792 man-days), sustainable livelihood index (70.2%), and nutrient cycling (138.12, 67.9, and 381.6 kg/ha of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, respectively). These findings can be a scientific basis for the optimization and sustainable management of natural resources under different modules of IFS for the less-endowed small and marginal farmers.

Enhancing Year-Round Profitability for Small-Scale Ranchers: An Economic Analysis of Integrated Cattle and Mushroom Production System

“…An integrated farming system (IFS) is a mixed farming approach that combines crop and livestock activities in a mutually beneficial manner [19,20]. The objective is to implement a set of practices for resource development and utilization that results in significant and sustained increases in agricultural production and farm income [21].…”

“…Channabasavanna et al [40] developed a rice-fish-poultry system for rice-growing farmers in Karnataka, India, and found that the designed system exhibited the highest productivity, with a 26.3% increase compared to the conventional rice-rice system. Despite the numerous benefits of the IFS, some integrated systems require more money, labor, and other resources to initiate and maintain [19,20,23,[41][42][43]. For instance, Manjunath and Itnal [27] observed that integrating dairy production with coconut through forage intercropping increased net returns nearly fivefold compared to a monocropping system, but the production cost of the integrated system also increased by fivefold.…”

An evaluation of energy and carbon budgets in diverse cropping systems for sustainable diversification of rainfed uplands in India's eastern hill and plateau region

“…Energy use efficiency (Fatima et al, 2023), economic returns, and environmental sustainability (Shyam et al, 2023) of agriculture enterprises are greatly influenced by the quantum and form of energy used in a cropping system. A production system with comparatively lower input requirements and higher outputs is the most efficient one (Upadhyay et al, 2022).…”