| The recent farmers' distress has thrown up an important lesson that has not been learnt. The victims of the agrarian crisis have generally been those farmers who had given up the traditional multi-enterprise farming (involving a combination of agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry and other ventures) in favour of mono-cropping (growing the same crops year after year). The others managed to survive largely because even if one enterprise failed to provide any income, the others were there to cover the risks and take care of subsistence concerns. |
| What is generally not appreciated is that integrated farming systems can be as lucrative, if not more, as intensive cropping sequences involving wheat, rice, cotton, sugarcane or other crops. The biggest advantage offered by the integrated farming approach is that the by-product of one enterprise can serve as an input for the other to keep down the costs and, hence, reduce the need for loans even while ensuring regular year-round income. And from this viewpoint, such ventures are ideally suited for small farmers who predominate the Indian countryside. |
| Indeed, the viability, as also the profitability, of multi-enterprise agriculture has been now ascertained by the Karnal-based Central Soil Salinity Research Institute (CSSRI) by actually trying it out on a two-hectare farm on reclaimed alkaline land. "We have evolved a model of multi-enterprise agriculture which integrates agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, dairying, beekeeping and fisheries to ensure regular and higher income for small farmers," points out CSSRI director Gurbachan Singh. |
| He commends this as an alternative for the wheat-rice cropping system in vogue in Punjab, Haryana and elsewhere in the northwestern region for nearly four decades now. The cultivation of wheat and rice year after year on the same land has resulted in a loss of soil fertility, causing a deficiency of several plant nutrients in the soil, besides depletion of ground water. The shallow cavity tubewells have now gone dry due to the lowering of the water table. The farmers have to go in for deep tubewells with submersible pumps costing in excess of Rs 1 lakh, which many of them can ill-afford. |
| In the CSSRI model, the two-hectare plot (the normal size of most farmers' holdings) has been divided into six segments. While 0.8 hectares has been set apart for crop production (rice, wheat, mustard, maize, and so on), the five other plots of 0.2 hectare each have been devoted to dairy farming (growing fodder and maintaining four buffaloes), horticulture (fruits and vegetables), floriculture and fish farming. Bee-keeping, mushroom cultivation and gobar-gas (animal dung) plant have also been weaved into the system. |
| The most interesting part of this model is the inclusion of livestock in the system for providing inputs for fisheries, crops and biogas plant to meet fuel needs. A part of the animal excreta is used to run the biogas plant; another part of it, along with crop residues and other vegetative wastes, to produce compost with the help of worms; and the slurry from the biogas plant is directed into the fish pond as fish feed. This, evidently, is an efficient way to utilise farm wastes gainfully. |
| Indeed, the most noteworthy part of this experiment is the high economic returns that this model generates. While the net profit from the rice-wheat plot (converted to per-hectare basis) came to about Rs 39,400 a hectare, that from vegetables (bottle gourd-cauliflower rotation) was around Rs 80,000 a hectare. The income from floriculture (gladiolus and marigold) varied at different times of the year, being the maximum at the time of the peak demand during the festival season. |
| This apart, bee-keeping involving 25 bee-colonies, generated honey worth Rs 40,000 in six months and fish sale from a 0.2-hectare pond fetched around Rs 15,000. Besides, the sale of vegetables and milk provided regular daily income, with milk alone contributing about Rs 400 a day (at Rs 17 a litre). |
| While all this, indeed, is an eye opener and, therefore, needs to be emulated on small farms, the expected long-term benefits of such a multi-enterprise farming venture are going to be even more valuable. Apart from improving soil health and fertility, such a system would avert ground water depletion and save the environment from being polluted with the burning of crop residues. |
| Thus, while scientists have done their job by demonstrating a viable mixed-farming model for small farmers, it is now for the extension agencies and state administrations to promote it among farmers. |
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