Livelihood improvement through integrated farming system interventions to resource poor farmers

Abstract

The field experiment was conducted to study the integrated farming approach over conventional method of agriculture farming. An area of 5.6 ha of land was selected for the experimental trial involving twelve small and marginal farmers at village Chakramdas of Vaishali district in Bihar. The initial survey conducted to assess the farming practice and the economics of conventional farming over developed integrated farming systems (IFS). The crop equivalent yield (q/ha), net returns (Rs/ha) and the Benefit: Cost ratio was calculated both as per farmers practice and as per integrated farming approach. Crop + fish +duck +goat integration supersedes over all other integrations in terms of monetary returns (Rs. 1,07, 828/annum) with a sustainability index of 83.9 while in terms of RGEY, Crop + fish + cattle integration supersedes among other integrations (18.76t/ha) but due to more labour requirement it couldn't supersedes over crop + fish + duck + goat integration in economic terms. Under individual component goat rearing again supersedes over other enterprises with a B: C ratio of 2.7. Additional nutrient gain in terms of NPK was found highest with poultry upon nutrient recycling within the system.