Uttar Pradesh & West Bengal: An overwhelming 85% Indian farmers are small (1-2 ha of land) and marginal (less than 1 ha of land) and increasingly women. For these farmers, industrial mono-cropping with its high inputs and accessing large-scale government loans or schemes is not viable. What works for these small and marginal farmers is integrated farming, carried out in different geographical regions in different ways. With the increase in natural disasters, innovative use of these small lands and crop production has helped tide farmers through emergency times. In West Bengal, one such innovative method is called land shaping and in eastern Uttar Pradesh it’s called ‘machaan’ or multi-level cropping. Both kinds create different levels for sowing different crops on a small piece of land and include a variety of food and cash crops.
Farmers grow crops ranging from grains to vegetables and herbs, plant fodder trees, rear poultry other livestock and even fish. In the Sunderbans, fish raising and poultry is integrated by digging a small pond on a patch of the farmland to grow fish; poultry is raised in enclosed cages or, inte flood-prone areas, on a raised wooden platform above the pond. In Sunderbans, Labout 50% of the land is used to grow paddy and vegetables, 20% for fish, 15% for rearing cattle and poultry and the rest 15% for cultivation of fodder. In eastern Uttar Pradesh, two methods are followed. One is the multi-level cropping on the same piece of land and another is integrated farming with a pond and a raised platform for poultry with fodder and fruit trees grown on the banks of the pond and grain and food crops on the rest of the land.
Integrated farming allows diversification of crops which puts in place a network of soil nutrients flow, imparts stability in production and gives food and economic security during climate fluctuations. If one crop fails, the others survives. If all crops are damaged, people still have fish, milk, eggs, and poultry animals for survival. Organic farm wastes, crop residues, animal urine and dung, etc. are recycled and reused as compost, farm-yard manure, vermi-compost, matka khaad, NADEP, etc.
In Sunderbans, integrated farming is resilient to increasing soil salinity. Part of the land is excavated and the soil extracted is piled on another portion of land where paddy is grown. Fresh rain waters wash away the salinity in the top soil into the pond below where saline fish are reared. On the raised land, salinity is thus replaced with fresh water. Traditional saline-resilient paddy varieties are able to survive well in the soil salinity below. The fish pond is linked to trenches across the farm so that fish have more room to swim and spawn. Varieties of vegetables, fruit and fuel trees, medicinal plants are grown on raised soil mounds with furrows in-between where again, fresh rainwaters wash away the salinity into the furrows and from there into the narrow trenches or fish channels.
In Gorakhpur district in eastern Uttar Pradesh, small farmers grow multi-layered crops on the same piece of land so that in case the floods wash away lower height crops, at least those growing at a higher level are saved.
From a Gender Lens
Integrated farming provides additional income for the family and is especially useful for the nutritional security of women and children. However, integrated farming has increased women’s share of time and labour compared to men. This is because in conventional farming, male farmers purchase the chemical inputs but in integrated farming systems, women collect cow dung, domestic organic waste, husk, etc, store them in chambers and then prepare farmyard manure or vermin-compost. Integrated farming combines farming with animal husbandry, poultry and fisheries, the latter three predominantly being a woman’s responsibility. Thus, integrated farming increases women’s workload. Almost 75% of the activities involved in integrated farming are contributed by women.
Yet, women are not considered farmers in their own right because they do not own land and so cannot access credit, technology and other inputs through government schemes. For example, women do not own Kisan Credit Cards to be able to access credit though on paper these can be owned by landless agricultural labour. Crop insurance too accrues only to landowners, majority of whom are men. Livestock, essential for integrated farming, is not promoted on a large scale though it would help women. Seeds, manure, herbicides and other inputs required for integrated farming are not available from panchayats and block-level offices or from government shops. Where these are available, women are not able to access these because of limited knowledge, restricted mobility or lack of funds. A resilient farming system where women can be knowledge leaders and managers is not given priority by the country’s agriculture infrastructure.
Policy Options
Development of Integrated Farming System has been included as new interventions under technologies and practices category of National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture but unfortunately women farmers’ issues remain unaddressed. Practicing integrated farming is expensive for a small/marginal farmer as the initial land-shaping needs money. Women-headed households and women who do not own land will find it impossible to get credit to do this task. The idea of land-shaping and bunds around flood-prone fields could be integrated into Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGA) with its existing provisions, like, excavating new ponds and renovating traditional waterbodies. Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana (SGRY) too offers social forestry, agri-horticulture and pond excavation/re-excavation with primary support for pisciculture on private lands and can help farmers grow multi-level canopies of vegetation.
Further Reading
1. Resource organisation: GEAG (www.geagindia.org) and DRCSC (www.drcsc.org)
2. National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture Guidelines 2014
http://agricoop.nic.in/imagedefault/whatsnew/nmsagidelines.pdf
3. Government Programme: MNREGA: www.nrega.nic.in
4. Government Programme: RKVY: www.rkvy.nic.in