17Sustainable Intensification of Rice-Based Cropping Systems: Experiences from Eastern India
A. K. Srivastava1, Malay K. Bhowmick1,2, Kanwar Singh3, Pardeep-Sagwal1, S. Khandai3, S. K. Dwivedi4, Amit K. Srivastava1, V. Kumar3, Ashok Kumar5, Sampad R. Patra6, Virender Kumar7, and Sudhanshu Singh1
1IRRI-South Asia Regional Centre (ISARC), Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India
2Directorate of Agriculture (Government of West Bengal), Kolkata, West Bengal, India
3International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Guwahati, Assam, India
4Indira Gandhi Krishi Vishwavidyalaya (IGKV), Raipur, India
5International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
6Department of Agriculture (Government of West Bengal), Kolkata, West Bengal, India
7International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Los Baños, Philippines
DOI: 10.1201/9781003164968-20
CONTENTS
17.1 Introduction
Rice is a preferred primary food around the globe. Asian countries produce and consume more than three-fourth of total rice production. More than 250 million farm households’ livelihood depends on rice cultivation in Asia only. India contributes to about 21.5% of the world’s total rice production. Indian agriculture is primarily dependent on predominant rice-based cropping systems (RBCS), covering around 43% of total rice-growing areas. In eastern India, major rice-based systems include rice–rice (R–R), rice–wheat (R–W), rice–rapeseed/mustard, rice–groundnut, rice–potato, and rice–pulses, based on agroecological conditions, market and domestic necessities and facilities available with farmers. The challenges in eastern India are intense due to the dependence on monsoon, small landholdings, lack of scale-appropriate mechanization, subsistence nature of farming, poor infrastructure for storage and marketing, etc. Furthermore, inefficient input use (fertilizer, water, labor), growing water scarcity, increasing labor shortage, escalating cultivation cost due to high fuel price, and labor wages make the situation grim (Ladha et al., 2009; Kumar and Ladha, 2011).
Because of socioeconomic and other factors, many smallholder farmers mostly rely on agricultural production and suffer from malnourishment. However, these smallholder farmers have a huge potential for increasing productivity. Climatic and social factors along with the timely supply of quality agricultural inputs play an important role in productivity gains. Gaining economic advantages while maintaining the environment is the root of sustainability. However, environmental responsibility, economic viability, and social acceptability are the important crucial pillars for measuring sustainability in defined geography. Sustainable intensification (SI) has emerged as the best strategy to improve the productivity potential of geographical locations while reducing input use and minimizing environmental impacts (Gatto et al., 2020).
The prevailing RBCS, nowadays, is losing its potential ground due to a decrease in factor productivity. Hence, identifying suitable RBCS with higher resource-use efficiency fitting to the local agroecological situation is of prime importance. The SI of RBCS mainly aims to achieve maximum system productivity with minimum environmental impact by managing and reorienting crops in the systems to best utilize available resources (soil, air, sunlight, water, labor, equipment) and their beneficial interactions as well. Availability of climate-resilient varieties (inbreds and hybrids) of varying duration (short duration [SD] and medium duration [MD]), tailored management practices, and expanding irrigation facilities coupled with conservation practices provide an immense scope of cropping system intensification, higher water productivity, economic profitability, and long-term sustainability. Proper selection of component crops for diversification and intensification needs to be well maneuvered to harness the synergism among efficient resource utilization and improved crop varieties while mitigating...
