Innovation in Small-Farm Agriculture

Improving Livelihoods and Sustainability

Amitava Rakshit, Somsubhra Chakraborty, Manoj Parihar, Vijay Singh Meena, Pradeep Kumar Mishra, Harikesh Bahadur Singh, Amitava Rakshit, Somsubhra Chakraborty, Manoj Parihar, Vijay Singh Meena, Pradeep Kumar Mishra, Harikesh Bahadur Singh

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000574142
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Tecnologia e ingegneria
• Subtopic: Selvicoltura

Innovation in Small-Farm Agriculture: Improving Livelihoods and Sustainability is an invaluable resource focussing on the current state of knowledge and scientific advances about the complex and intertwined issues of innovation and how they relate to livelihood of small-scale farmers. This book exposes readers with a holistic overview on how agriculture is most associated with the development and transfer of technologies to farmers and their participation in research and development initiatives to improve the relevancy and usefulness of its outputs and innovation which is not well documented.

The book offers comprehensive coverage of the most essential topics, including:

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• Recent scientific advances on agricultural innovations for small farmers.

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• Emphasizes on opportunities and constraints of techno-institutional paradigms.

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• Highlight low-cost and eco-friendly interventions.

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• Case studies on various innovations in agriculture spanning the different agricultural gamut.

Section IIIInnovative Agriculture-Multi-stakeholder Approach in Different Continents: Practice and Performance

17Sustainable Intensification of Rice-Based Cropping Systems: Experiences from Eastern India

A. K. Srivastava¹, Malay K. Bhowmick^1,2, 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
• 17.2 Opportunities for Sustainable Intensification in Eastern India
• 17.3 Strategies for Sustainable Intensification of Rice-Based Cropping Systems
  • 17.3.1 Selection of Crops and Their Suitable Varieties for Sustainable Intensification and Crop Diversification
  • 17.3.2 Resource-Efficient Alternative Crop Establishment Methods
  • 17.3.3 Harnessing Rice Fallows
  • 17.3.4 Efficient Nutrient Management
  • 17.3.5 Relay (Paira/Utera) Cropping
  • 17.3.6 Efficient Water Management
  • 17.3.7 Integrated Weed Management
  • 17.3.8 Integrated Farming System
• 17.4 Conclusions
• References

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...