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Abhilaksh Likhi
Additional Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, GoI
Parveen is an instance of a small farmer from Vagarahalli village of Hassan district in Karnataka whose enterprise has made sustainable agriculture a actuality on his 1.69-hectare farm. Traditionally, he grew crops equivalent to ragi (finger millet), maize, potato and coconut with a small dairy and poultry unit. The use of improved varieties and hybrids has been supplemented on the farm with introduction of high-value crops equivalent to ginger and sericulture. Drumstick and papaya have been intercropped with coconut. Silver oak has been planted all alongside the farm borders. Farm waste is being recycled into wholesome manure. He has put in a micro-sprinkler irrigation system within the coconut backyard as well as to utilizing applicable farm machineries equivalent to coconut climbers and de-huskers.
Despite the challenges of local weather change, soil fatigue and discount of water availability, with the above measures, Parveen has elevated his web annual earnings from Rs 47,740 to Rs 7.28 lakh! Without doubt, technical and capacity-building assist from the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), Hassan, has been a important useful resource.
The Doubling Farmers Income (DFI) Report, 2017, observes that the combination of farm actions, in each rainfed and dryland areas, when fastidiously chosen, deliberate and executed can yield better dividends for sustainable livelihoods, particularly within the case of small and marginal farmers.
The Union Government is implementing the National Mission of Sustainable Agriculture. The goal of this mission is to extensively leverage the difference of built-in farming practices and applicable applied sciences along with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), and extra importantly, the state governments.
Food and dietary wants of a extra health-conscious inhabitants entails a diversification of farming from staples in direction of high-value crops, equivalent to fruit and greens. Further, built-in farming with the inclusion of beekeeping, fisheries, sericulture, poultry and mushroom cultivation may give further high-energy meals with out affecting the manufacturing of foodgrains.
As per the National Statistical Office’s (NSO) Situational Assessment Survey 2018-19, the earnings from the livestock sector has quadrupled. Hence, the promotion of dairying and correct assortment and utilisation of livestock excreta can save up to 50 per cent of fertiliser inputs on farms as well as. Besides, combining social forestry on wastelands on farms can improve the restoration of soil fertility. The web outcome from such built-in farming, specialists add, could be a considerable improve in gainful employment and extra earnings to farm households, main to a greater lifestyle.
In India, the complexity will increase with the range in built-in farming practices by small and marginal farmers throughout our 15 agro-climatic zones. These embrace arid/desert areas and high-altitude, plain and coastal areas. For occasion, in a examine performed by the ICAR, the variety of built-in farming techniques ranged from eight in West Bengal to one within the states of Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Maharashtra and Karnataka. As many as six built-in farming techniques are in existence in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha.
In the above context, it turns into completely crucial to push institutional coverage interventions, in the beginning, to strengthen precision agriculture on the final mile in ‘on-farm management’. This encompasses the appliance of applicable applied sciences to support small and marginal farmers within the enter farming practices of tillage, residue, nutrient, water, weed and mechanisation administration.
Equally necessary is the technology and use of high quality knowledge and its analytics, each on the nationwide and state ranges, for such farming practices.
Concomitant to on-farm administration, additionally it is crucial to strengthen the final mile ‘farmgate’ infrastructure via the requisite investments. This is to join small and marginal farmers practising built-in farming to each home and worldwide markets. They are many a time unable to individually put money into the first processing infrastructure on the farmgate. This contains post-harvest administration actions via “pack houses” equivalent to drying, grading, sorting, ripening, waxing, packaging and high quality management evaluation. They additionally embrace crop-specific chilly chain storage/warehousing with pre-cooling services, reefer automobiles and distribution hubs for perishable crops. Small and marginal farmers are additionally generally unaware of the crop high quality specs required by several types of consumers and clever details about the near-farm, throughout states and export markets.
Our KVKs below the aegis of the ICAR have created and nurtured a number of profitable built-in farming system fashions with crop mixtures. The time is ripe for them to study and dovetail from the nice practices of the myriad personal sector agritech initiatives, particularly agri-startups, within the rural panorama. To title just a few, Dehaat, Ninjacart, Sammunati, Waycool, Agrostar and Jumbotail have attracted enormous enterprise capital funding in precision agriculture, on-farm administration, provide chain and output market initiatives, in accordance to a 2021 Ernst & Young examine.
The creation of the Rs 1 lakh crore Agri Infrastructure Fund (AIF) by the Union Government can also be a step in the fitting route. It offers entry to credit score, with curiosity subvention, for agri-entrepreneurs, farmer producer organisations (FPOs) and governments to put money into rural neighborhood belongings and post-harvest infrastructure.
There is an incredible penetration of broadband connectivity and cell utilization in villages. Hence, digital interplay with farmers on built-in farming ‘package of practices’ has to be supplemented with the bodily attain of ample numbers of extension officers of agriculture, horticulture and allied departments. The use of Common Service Centres (CSCs), on this context, has to be intensified too. These are last-mile public supply entry factors in districts that present high-quality and cost-effective video, voice, knowledge content material and public utility providers.
It is within the above sturdy ecosystem that small farmers, equivalent to Parveen from Karnataka, will probably be doubly empowered via a public-private partnership strategy to imbibe the financial, ecological and sustainable dimensions of built-in farming.
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