Integrated farming system approaches to achieve food and nutritional security for enhancing profitability, employment, and climate resilience in India

Abstract

Integrated farming systems (IFS) entail a holistic approach to farming aimed at meeting the multiple demands (impart farm resilience, farmer livelihoods, food security, ecosystem services, and making farms adaptive and resilient, etc.). IFS are characterized by temporal and spatial mixing of crops, livestock, fishery, and allied activities in a single farm. It is hypothesized that these complex farms are more productive at a system level, are less vulnerable to volatility, and produce less negative externalities than simplified farms. Thereby, they cater the needs of small and marginal farmers, who are the backbone of agriculture in India. Our review of literature shows that IFS have the potential to improve farm profitability (265%) and employment (143%) compared to single enterprise farms. The literature showed that IFS enhance nutrient recycling through composting, mulching, and residue incorporation and, as a consequence, have the capacity to reduce the external purchase of inputs. The nutrient recycling in turn helps to increase the soil quality indicators such as soil nutrient availability and also improves soil microbial activity. The IFS play a major role in biodiversity conservation through adoption of diversified cropping system and through integration of indigenous livestock breeds. IFS also played important role in improving soil organic carbon from 0.75 to 0.82%. Due to increased carbon sequestration, biomass production by trees, reduced consumption of fertilizers, and pesticides the greenhouse gas emission could be reduced significantly. This results in a linked system making it sustainable and climate‐resilient. The main challenge associated with adoption of IFS is it requires skill, knowledge, resources, labor, and capital which are not always available with small and marginal farmers. There is a need for integrating productivity, profitability, and environmental sustainability variables in a single evaluation framework to effectively generate information toward enhancing adaptability of IFS.

Vegetation dynamics in the Madiwatershed, Gandaki Province of Nepal

“…In traditional agrarian regions, rural farmers are highly dependent on public forest resources such as fooder, fuel wood, building materials, etc. because they have an integrated farming system among cultivated land, livestock, and forest resources (Jha & Bawa 2006, Paramesh et al 2022, Wenhua & Min 1999. The mountain and hills of Nepal have a traditional intensive subsistence farming system and the majority and most of them are still in the same condition.…”

A Sustainable Way for Integrated Farming System: A Case Study on Bellary District of Karnataka, India

“…Most spawnings in rice fields produce glue-like eggs that are generally arranged on green plants to provide extra oxygen and nutrition designed for maturing embryos (AL-Kattan et al, 2019;Al-Rejaboo & Jalaluldeen, 2019;Falya et al, 2021). However, shallow water net constructors and spawners breed in paddy fields under ideal conditions) (Paramesh et al, 2022).…”

Aquaculture: To Achieve Economic Development in Bihar, India-A Review

“…The flower plantation like Rose, Jasmine, Gladiolus, Marigold and Chrysanthemum on the embankment is also provides additional income to the farmer and besides aiding beauty to the farm. Farmers depending intensive agriculture on single farm enterprise in India are unable to sustain their livelihood, but the integration of crops, livestock, fishery components enable them to sustain food, and nutritional security with regular and periodic income round the year (Paramesh et al, 2022, Yadav et al, 2022. Kumar et al (2012) demonstrated that enhancement of the productivity of resources, economic returns, generating employment and maintaining soil health of farm can be achieved by the combination of crop, fish, duck and goat at low-laying lands of Bihar instead of cultivating crop alone on same piece of land under irrigated condition.…”

“…T he fisheries sector contributes significantly to the Indian socio-economic, nutritional security and foreign exchange (Lokesh and Khidrapure, 2016, Sharma et al, 2019, Suguna, 2020, Ngasotter et al, 2020, Chand and Prasad, 2021 and sector shares 1.07% and 5.30% to the national and agricultural GDP, respectively (Rajani and Balasubramanian, 2021). Average size of operating land holding in Indian farmers is reducing continuously due to outcome of subdivision of property across generations and also India's policies (Kumar et al, 2012, Kumar and Sharma, 2020, Giller et al, 2021, Balkrishna et al, 2022, Paramesh et al, 2022, limits horizontal expansion of aquaculture ponds. But, aquaculture grows at an astonishing rate of 46.8% due to its technological advancement (Sarkar et al, 2019, Suguna, 2020, Chand and Prasad, 2021.…”

“…However, unpredicted and extreme weather stresses are often reasons for loss in agricultural venture and downgraded the State's economy (Giller et al, 2021, Pagnani et al, 2021, Agarwal et al, 2022. But, even small and marginal farmers can improve their income dramatically with typology-based intervention for aquaculture such as land shaping for aquaagri integration with crop, horticulture, fishery, livestock and poultry (Kumar et al, 2012, Dash et al, 2015, Srinivasan, 2017, Sarkar et al, 2019, Bhargavi and Behera, 2020, Khobragade et al, 2021, Kumaran et al, 2020, Kaur et al, 2021, Balkrishna et al, 2022, Paramesh et al, 2022, Yadav et al, 2022. revealed economic superiority of aquaculture over agriculture along with culture based fisheries in wetland of Bihar.…”