Adoption of Sustainable Dryland Technologies for Improving Livelihood of Farmers in Developing Countries

Abstract

Drylands are home to an estimated two billion people across the world, about 90% of who live in developing countries. Drylands represented 43.2% of total global area in 2020 and are predicted to be 44.2% in 2050. Human population in drylands is fret with poverty, food insecurity, biodiversity loss, frequent droughts, environmental degradation and water scarcity at critical times during agricultural seasons which are aggravated by climate change. In drylands, agriculture depends upon the erratic weather conditions and is referred to as dryland farming. Dryland farming is the cultivation of crops without irrigation in regions of limited moisture, receiving typically less than 500 mm precipitation annually. Sustainable technologies and risk management strategies are required to be adopted by dryland farmers to cope with the natural vagaries of the region. Dryland technologies like land conservation measures improve land productivity by managing soil, water and vegetation resources to produce perceptible changes with regard to water resources development in the watershed. Technologies for enhanced water use efficiency of crops grown hold importance in case of dryland agriculture so as to realize ‘more crop per drop’. Physiological and agronomic practices among others could be utilized for better crop management through adoption of suitable technologies for minimizing evaporation and transpiration losses. For dryland areas, agronomic measures such as summer ploughing, ridges and furrows, contour farming, ploughing across slopes, vegetative barriers, crop rotation, strip cropping, mulching, amendments to soil, alternate land use pattern (ALUP) and chisel ploughing are important for soil and water management. The most important soil and water management techniques in dryland areas include BBF, contour bunding, contour trenches, contour stone walls, compartmental bunding, random tied ridging, basin listing, bench terracing, microcatchments, farm ponds, percolation ponds, check dams, etc. Scheduling of irrigation, efficient use of nitrogen fertilizers, better irrigation system, etc. can lead to improved soil health and crop productivity thus providing good returns to farm household. Development of improved crop varieties with characteristics, i.e. efficient utilization of abiotic factors to maximize stable economic yield and total production, high early seedling vigour, wide crop adaptability, deep-rooted branched root system, photo-thermo insensitivity and disease resistance, is the main prospect for improving crop production under dryland conditions. Socioeconomic and personal attributes affect the adoption of sustainable technologies in dryland agriculture farmers. Adoption of evaporation and transpiration minimization technologies involves multiple trade-off and risks on the part of the farmers. Nevertheless, there exist many success stories from different developing nations of the world where adoption of sustainable dryland farming technologies resulted in enhanced productivity of crops and generated additional income for the farmers. Operational Research Project on dryland agriculture at Alanatha, Karnataka, India, from 2010 to 2014 involved opening of moisture conservation furrow between paired rows of pigeon pea in finger millet + pigeon pea (8:2) and groundnut + pigeon pea (8:2) intercropping systems which recorded higher finger millet grain equivalent yield (3156 kg/ha) and groundnut equivalent (1007 kg/ha) yield with higher net returns (37,390 and 18,842/ha, respectively) and higher values of sustainable yield index (0.56 and 0.30, respectively). Livelihood and environmental benefits were created by an experimental afforestation plantation in the semiarid Dhanawas village in Haryana, India. The plantation was carried out on 8 ha of communally owned wasteland. The plantation was a source of employment for the poorer households of the village generating 4220 days of work. Development of appropriate policies and regional strategies to ensure adoption and promotion of sustainable technologies in drylands can ensure food, nutritional and livelihood security of farm families of the region.