Integrated Farming Systems as an Adaptation Strategy to Climate Change: Case Studies from Diverse Agro-Climatic Zones of India

Abstract

Climate change impacts agricultural productivity and farmers’ income, integrated farming systems (IFS) provide a mechanism to cope with such impacts. The nature and extent of climatic aberrations, perceived impact, and adaptation strategies by the farmers reduce the adverse effects of climate change on agriculture. Therefore, a study was conducted to investigate 2160 IFS farmers about their perceptions of climate change, barriers, and the likelihood of adapting to the negative impacts of climate change. The study observed an increasing rainfall trend for humid (4.18 mm/year) and semi-arid (0.35 mm/year) regions, while a decreasing trend was observed in sub-humid (−2.02 mm/year) and arid (−0.20 mm/year) regions over the last 38 years. The annual rise in temperature trends observed in different ACZs varied between 0.011–0.014 °C. Nearly 79% of IFS farmers perceived an increase in temperature, decreasing rainfall, variability in the onset of monsoon, heavy terminal rains, mid-season dry spells, and frequent floods due to climate change. The arid, semi-arid, sub-humid, and humid farmers’ adapted several measures in different components with an adaption index of 50.2%, 66.6%, 83.3%, and 91.6%, respectively. The majority of the IFS farmers perceived constraints in adopting measures to climate change, such as meta barriers, capacity barriers, and water barriers. Therefore, we infer that educated farmers involved in diversified and profitable farms with small to medium landholdings are concerned more about climate change in undertaking adaptive strategies to reduce the environmental impact of climate change.

Demarcation of Potential Groundwater Recharge Zones Through REMOTE Sensing, GIS, and MCDA: A Case Study of the Aji River Basin in Saurashtra, Gujarat, India

“…It affects biodiversity and ecosystem services of the agricultural production system. The adverse impact of climate change would be more significant in traditional semi-arid or arid rainfed zones, including India [4]. Arid and semi-arid zones in India are approximately 15.8 % and 37 %, respectively, nearly half of the total geographical areas.…”

The Spatiotemporal Evolution of the Growing Degree Days Agroclimatic Index for Viticulture over the Northern Mediterranean Basin

“…Additionally, a wide range of agroclimatic indices have been developed to establish a connection between atmospheric and agricultural environments on a climatic timescale [37][38][39][40]. These indices often quantify the thermal environment during crop growth, making them vital for applications in various agricultural aspects such as the evaluation of agrometeorological conditions and the related trends for staple crops [41][42][43][44], the estimation of the agrometeorological requirements for a plant phenology's principal stages [45], the assessment and projection of agroclimatic suitability with respect to the evolution of viticultural zoning [46][47][48][49], the prediction of abiotic and biotic hazards in fruit production [50], yield-production predictions [51,52], and also for policy and decision making and the implementation of adaptation strategies [53][54][55].…”

Food production potential and environmental sustainability of different integrated farming system models in northwest India

“…The IFS is a complex interrelated matrix of soil, plants, animals, implements, power, labor, capital, and other inputs controlled by farming families and influenced to varying degrees by political, economic, institutional, and other factors that operate at the farm level. It represents the integration of farm enterprises such as crops, animal husbandry, fisheries, forestry, sericulture, and poultry for optimum resource utilization (Paramesh et al, 2022). Diversified agricultural systems including livestock and crops are an ideal approach to build resilience in agricultural production systems (Sahoo et al, 2019;Babu et al, 2023).…”