Surinder Sud: The fruits of agro-forestry

FARM VIEW/ Farmers adopting this eco-friendly practice have benefited significantly

Terms like agri-silviculture, agri-horticulture and silvipastures may sound fanciful, but as part of agro-forestry, they are gaining relevance in view of the fast-degrading land and forest resources.

These are essentially eco-friendly practices that permit gainful exploitation of land to meet the fuel, fodder and timber needs of the population without impairing land productivity.

In fact, if followed scientifically, such land utilisation systems can result in enhancement of soil fertility, besides improving biodiversity.

Agri-silviculture primarily refers to the system of growing multi-purpose trees along with agricultural crops. When trees are grown along with grass, shrubs and other vegetation that can serve as animal feed, it becomes a silvipastoral system. And when some fruit trees are grown along with crops, it is called agri-horticulture.

All these practices are, as is obvious, quite lucrative for the local communities as well as individual land holders.

The need for adoption of these practices has arisen because of the rapidly reducing local fodder and fuel resources in the countryside, besides, of course, the growing ecological imbalance due to acceleration in denudation of natural vegetative cover and consequential deterioration in soil health.

Since the human and animal pressure on the land is fast increasing, the menace is sure to acquire even more dreadful proportion with time.

Many farm research organisations as well as other government and non-governmental bodies are busy developing suitable models for agro-forestry and promoting them among the rural communities.

The Jhansi-based Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute (IGFRI) has developed and successfully demonstrated in the field an environment-friendly silvipastoral system that can help rejuvenate degraded lands.

The IGFRI model is reported to have transformed the vegetative scenario of land around Ambabai village near Jhansi, where it has been put into practice through community participation. Lush green pastures have now come up in the area as a result of the silvipastoral system, comprising plantation of multi-purpose trees, grass and leguminous plant species that draw nitrogen from the atmosphere and put it in the soil to improve its fertility.

The selected fast-growing trees are the ones whose leaves constitute nutritious and palatable fodder for animals. The grasses grown in-between the trees are such that can be cut and carried for feeding animals in the initial phases, but allow on-land grazing by animals once they are fully grown.

The leguminous crops, too, are the ones whose leaves and stems can be consumed by the livestock and seeds can find place in human diet.

The evaluation of this system after nearly a decade of its operation has revealed that the availability of biomass (in terms of fodder, food, fuel and timber) has grown over 10 fold.

What is even more significant, the productivity of this stretch of land has risen by about two-and-half times during this period. And, as could be expected, the community's basic needs for fodder, fuel and timber are now being met to a large extent from the local resources.

Not far from Jhansi, in the Bundelkhand region of central India, the National Research Centre for Agro-forestry (NRCAF) is encouraging farmers to grow fruit trees, including the commercially important ones, along with regular field crops of the area, such as wheat, groundnut, urd and so on.

One of the marginal farmers of village Tijju, who earlier found it difficult to maintain his family of 14 on his tiny (less than two hectares) farm, took to agro-forestry way back in 1993-94 and is now counted among the economically better-off villagers.

The agro-forestry model that succeeded for him comprised growing of fruit trees of guava, aonla and pomegranate and cultivating two crops a year of either groundnut and wheat, or urd and wheat.

NRCAF experts have also tried out, with considerable success, agro-forestry combinations of fruit trees like ber, papaya and multi-purpose trees species like subabool and eucalyptus along with crops like wheat, urd, mung, soyabean, groundnut and others.

Such systems also allow growing traditional local vegetation like jharberi and Banarasi karaka (Ziziphus species) on the boundaries of the fields. These are hardy trees that can withstand adverse climatic conditions.

After five years of introduction of these agro-forestry practices, the concerned farmers now manage not only to meet the bulk of their basic needs of fuel, wood, fodder, fruit, small timber and even staple foodgrain, but also earn a net annual income of over Rs 20,000 a hectare from the sale of the surplus produce.

Since rural people having low-risk bearing capacity prefer to see new technology being in place elsewhere before trying it out themselves, such demonstrations are turning out to be highly useful. A large number of farmers have begun adopting these techniques and reaping the benefits as well.