Exploring the Status, Prospects and Constraints of Riverbed Cultivation in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal, India

Abstract

Riverbed farming is a sustainable, productivity-enhancing technology suitable for dissemination in other appropriate areas. It has been shown to be economically viable, environmentally sustainable, socially acceptable and technologically appropriate for landless and land-poor farmers in the Terai region. The study was conducted on five villages from three riverbed systems with 20 respondents from each village thereby totaling number of 100 respondents. The data were collected on information about riverbed cultivation, marketing of riverbed products, prospects of riverbed cultivation and constraints of riverbed cultivation. The results shows that 100% respondents give first rank to proper utilization of riverbed land for adopting riverbed cultivation and 100% accept that they have used income from riverbed cultivation to setup other occupations. It was also shown that most of the farmers sell their produce through middlemen from the farm that was 75% in Singimari river bed system followed by 65% in Torsha and 60% in Shiltorsha respectively and transportation was the most important constraint having mean value 2.83