Impacts of climate smart jute farming on resource use efficiency, productivity and economic benefits in rural Eastern India

Abstract

The study was conducted in jute-growing areas of West Bengal (India) to explore the potential resource use efficiency for economic benefits of selected climate smart practices to marginal landholder farmers. Integrated crop management (ICM) practices as part of climate smart jute farming (CSJF) was practised by 170 randomly selected farmers in six villages. An estimation of cost of adoption, change in fibre yields, net returns and human development index (HDI) before and after ICM interventions was done. The mean HDI value increased by 38.85% and farm income by 31.5%. The net benefits of adaptation to climate smart jute technologies were estimated based on specific adaptation actions. Empirical scientific evidence of the study indicates that the livelihoods of marginal landholders can be improved using new crop varieties, changing planting dates and bringing necessary changes in other variable inputs for line sowing, intercropping, weeding, nutrients, water and retting.

Retting with efficient microbial consortium helps in improving jute fibre quality and profitability: a study in Eastern India

“…The significant decrease in retting duration with microbial consortium was also reported (Majumdar and Satpathy, 2014;Das et al, 2018;Singh et al, 2019, Majumdar et al, 2021and Chatterjee and Mondal, 2022. The significantly lower jute retting duration over the years with microbial consortium implies the efficacy of the microbial consortium in quick completion of jute retting.…”

“…Jute (Corchorus olitorius L. and C. capsularis L.) is one of the most important cash crops of Eastern India, particularly for the state of West Bengal. Under the changing climatic scenario, cultivation of jute crop can help to mitigate the adverse effect of -1 climate change by low carbon footprint of 566 kg CO -eq t of jute 2 (Singh et al, 2018) and high carbon sequestration capacity of -1 4.88 to 5.30 t ha of raw jute production (Singh et al, 2019) during four months of its life cycle. Now a days, the ligno-cellulosic jute fibre is used for high valued diversified products like carpet, apparel, composites, canvas, decorative etc., which is otherwise used only for manufacturing of low valued products like geotextiles, hessian cloth, sacking cloth, rope, jute bags etc.…”

“Agricultural Weeder with Nail Assembly” for Weed Control, Soil Moisture Conservation, Soil Aeration and Increasing Crop Productivity

“…In two operations, at 5 days interval since 5 DAE, it requires only 12-18 man days/ha. With the help of this tool, 85 to 90 per cent of composite weeds weeds can be controlled [10] (Ghorai et al, 2016). However, rest 10 -15% of the weed flora has to be removed manually.…”

Potential of lignocellulolytic biocatalysts of native and proposed genetically engineered microbial cell factories on jute fiber modification and jute waste recycling: A review

“…The Retting step is crucial as if improper retting takes place, it may lead to the generation of inferior quality fiber which ultimately results in a loss for the farmers. One problematic scenario observed every year in these countries, is the unavailability of a sufficient amount of free-flowing good, quality mild water during jute harvesting season for irregular climatic behavior that causes uncertainty of rainwater (Singh et al 2019a). If water scarcity occurs, groundwater is used; as a result, the groundwater level goes down, and more water is required for soil saturation.…”