Agriculture
Agriculture’s contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals requires climate-smart and profitable farm innovations. In the past decade, attention has been given to conservation agriculture as a ‘sustainable intensification’ strategy, although a lack of evidence-based consensus on the merits of conservation agriculture prevails in the context of intensive smallholder farming in South Asia. With in-house expertise, ESPL is keen on working in various segments of agriculture, managing thechallenges and ensure commercial sustainability for the farming community.
A. Conventional/ Commercial Farming:
Conventional/ Commercial Farmingare based on the economies of scale following intensive crop production practices that employs latest technological innovations and incorporates the use of synthetic agricultural applications. Commercial farming systems vary from farm to farm and from country to countryin their approach and characteristics. Mostly these farming systems rely on technologyapplication, large capital investments in equipment and technology, large-scale farms, single crops (monocultures); uniform high-yield hybrid crops, dependency on agribusiness, mechanization of farm activities, and extensive use of agri-inputs like pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides. However with change in consumer demand for safe food, the focus has been changed towards both food security and safety. Thus the current practice has to be sustainable farming system using Integrated Nutrient Management and Integrated Pest Management for protection of soil, water, environment and health and fair trade practices for better marketability.
B. Integrated Farming System (IFS)
The ever-increasing population in India has resulted in decline in per capita availability of land in the country.Because of the reduction in operational farm holding, there is practically no scope for horizontal expansion of land for agriculture. In this context the monoculture approaches have become highly unviable livelihood option for the small holder farmers.Hence for increasing farm productivity and ensuring sustainable farm based livelihood, agriculture must include an integrated farming system approach including mixed croppingand crop-livestockbased farming with efficient, environmentally friendly and cost-effective soil, water, crop and waste management practices, to increasing farm yield.
The integrated farming system focuses on increasing farm productivity by diversifying farm production, resource integration, exploitation of unutilized resources and creating market linkagesto increase cash income, improve the quality and quantity of food produced.The emergence of integrated farming systems has enabled farmers to develop a framework for an alternative development model to improve the feasibility of small sized farming operations. Integrated farming tries to imitate nature’s principle, where not only crops but also varied types of plants, animals, birds, fish, and other aquatic flora and fauna are utilized for production. The basic principle is to enhance the ecological diversity:
ESPL envisage to promote IFS and build capacity of the small and marginal farmer families to adopt this approach and ensure better livelihood. ESPL shall train the farmers for increasing stability in the farm input and the output, not only for survival but also for increased employment in off-farm sector and help them in:
- Natural farming with improved varieties and crop management practices
- Choosing the appropriate cropping methodology with mixed cropping, crop rotation, crop combination and inter-cropping so that there is less competition for water, nutrition and space and by adopting eco-friendly practices
- Utilizing a multi-story arrangement so that the total available area is used effectively and there is a high level of interaction between biotic and abiotic components
- Integrating subsystems by which the various components interact positively, so that the overall farm productivity is increased.
- Optimize the use of locally available resources, to achieve a synergetic effect among the various components of the farming systems
- Recycling ofthe farm waste for productive purposes, site-specific nutrient management, conservation technology, use of bio-fertilizers, crop rotation, zero tillage etc.under the integrated system
- A judicious mix of agricultural enterprises like dairy, poultry, piggery, fishery, sericulture etc. suited to the given agro-climatic conditions and socio-economic status of the farmers can bring prosperity to the farming operations.