Climate Risk Management at Farmer’s Field through Adaptation Strategies for Resource-Poor Farmers of Assam, Northeast India

Abstract

Farmers in Assam's North Bank Plains Zone are generally resource-poor and have limited adaptation ability; rainfall anomalies make the Zone's rainfed agriculture very sensitive, risky, and unprofitable. Participatory on-farm trials involving 25 farmers (5 from each village) representing different land situations for evaluating various adaptive strategies on rice-based cropping systems were conducted from 2011 to 2020. Ten years of rainfall data (2011-2021) are evaluated in connection to dry spells and their effects on rainfed rice-based farming systems. The village receives 2848.5 mm of annual rainfall, with distribution patterns of 25%, 67%, 5.0%, and 3% during the pre-monsoon, monsoon, post-monsoon, and winter seasons, respectively. Among the years under study, it has been observed that during 2010, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2020, the district received excess annual rainfall and deficit in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2018, 2019 and 2021,respectively. The current studies were designed with two primary strategic components in mind viz., Real-time Contingency Planning (RTCP) and Preparedness. Interventions under the RTCP were designed to deal with delayed monsoon onset, early-season drought, mid-season dryspell, and terminal drought in winter rice and rabi crops. Preparedness includes changes in cropping pattern, in situ and ex situ rainwater management systems, alternate land use under low-cost polyhouse, mushroom cultivation, vermicompost production, fodder bank and village seed bank to cope with weather aberrations. An increase in yield of HYV rice varieties Ranjit (33%), Mahsuri (12.3%) and Gitesh (32%) was observed when sowing was done before 15 June over late sowing conditions. An increase in yield of 21.73 % and 44.60%. 58.67% as compared to farmers' Practice during 2013-14, 2014-15, and 2016-17 respectively, has been observed. The performance of double cropping systems recorded the highest B: C ratio of 2.03 and 1.75 in winter rice + rapeseed followed by winter rice + potato sequence as compared to mono-cropping of winter rice.