GUWAHATI: A three-day symposium was organised by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to discuss the need for a policy framework to manage the transitions in shifting cultivation in North East India.
The policy need was underlined by VK Saraswat, Member of the NITI Aayog, in his inaugural address at the International Symposium on ‘Transitioning Shifting Cultivation to Climate-Resilient Farming Systems’ that concluded here today.
Saraswat said the transitions must be enabled by research and development that is contextual, including technology for agriculture on slopes, and implemented by national, state and farmers’ groups working together.
He referred to the loss of several varieties of food crops from shifting cultivation landscapes in the transition to cash cropping over the last few decades.
Regarding the critical issue of tenure and access to land, he suggested that shifting cultivation communities could explore the cooperative farming model of the Israeli kibbutz.
The ICIMOD is a regional intergovernmental learning and knowledge-sharing centre serving the eight regional member countries of the Hindu Kush Himalaya–Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan–and is based in Kathmandu.
The IFAD, on the other hand, is an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency based in Rome – the UN’s food and agriculture hub.
