Integrated Farming is an Effective Multiple Water use System to Enhance the Livelihood Security of Small and Marginal Farmers: A Review

Abstract

The agriculture sector faces numerous challenges like increasing population, decreasing per capita land, fragmented land holdings, land degradation and climate change in 21st Century. The downtrend of per capita land availability poses a severe threat to the sustainability and profitability of agriculture. This issue is severe for small and marginal farmers as they face many problems sustaining single farm enterprises. The global assessment on water scarcity indicates that about 66 % of the global population live under severe water scarcity conditions. Increasing land and water productivity for enhancing livelihood security of rural poor is the challenge for various stakeholders of agriculture and allied sectors. Larger numbers of integrated farming system models have been developed and demonstrated across the globe. In most cases, integrated farming systems combine crops and livestock components. However, water component is rarely included in a few integrated farming system models and needs to be upscaled its research and demonstration on a larger scale. Hence, it is the right time to review the existing integrated farming system models and analyze the research gap on multiple water-use integrated farming systems to derive a future road map. This systematic review analyzed all available integrated farming systems' prospects and retrospects and their impacts on production and productivity. The reviews proved that crop and livestock based integrated farming systems are outperforming and enhancing farmers income, employment opportunities and fulfilling the family's nutritional requirements by optimizing the farm's resources. However, the role of harvested water and its effect on the integrated farming system is rarely studied. Hence, the research on multiple water use based integrated farming systems needs to be developed and demonstrated in all agro-ecological regions of different countries. The water productivity functions for multiple water use-based integrated farming systems need to be derived and tested to understand the role of harvested water in multiple water use scenarios.