By US Saikia
CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK
To overcome the situation, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of United Nations recently presented ‘Agroecological’ approach of farming. The FAO emphasised that Agroecology should be the way to produce enough food for growing population, while protecting natural resources and livelihood and responding to climate change.
The integrated farming system (IFS) is a kind of ‘Agroecological approach’ which has different complementary components, ensures judicious application of natural resources, soil health restoration and bio-resource flow. It generates round the year employment to the farming family and guarantee food and nutritional security to a great extent. This is, therefore, considered as one of the most climate resilient and sustainable technologies as in case of failure of one of the components, the others perform to ensure livelihood security.
Building resilience in soil
Soil health is the key property that determines the resilience of crop production under changing climate. A number of interventions are made to build soil carbon, control soil loss due to erosion and enhance water holding capacity of soils, all of which build resilience in soil. Mandatory soil testing is done in all villages to ensure balanced use of chemical fertilisers and improved methods of fertiliser application, matching with crop requirement to reduce nitrous oxide emission.
Adapted cultivars & cropping systems
Farmers in the villages traditionally grow local varieties of different crops resulting in poor crop productivity due to heat, droughts or floods. Hence, improved, early duration drought, heat and flood tolerant varieties are introduced for achieving optimum yields despite climatic stresses. This varietal shift was carefully promoted by encouraging village level seed production and linking farmers decision-making to weather based agro advisories and contingency planning.
Rainwater harvesting
Rainwater harvesting and recycling through farm ponds, restoration of old rainwater harvesting structures in dryland/rainfed areas, percolation ponds for recharging of open wells, bore wells and injection wells for recharging ground water are taken up for enhancing farm level water storage.
Water saving technologies
Since climate variability manifests in terms of deficit or excess water, major emphasis was laid on introduction of water saving technologies like direct seeded rice, zero tillage and other resource conservation practices, which also reduce GHG emissions besides saving of water.
Community managed custom hiring centers are set up in each village to access farm machinery for timely sowing/planting. This is an important intervention to deal with variable climate like delay in monsoon, inadequate rains needing replanting of crops.
Crop contingency plans
To cope with climate variability, ICAR/CRIDA has developed district-level contingency plans for more than 400 rural districts. Operationalisation of these plans during aberrant monsoon years through the district/ block level extension staff help farmers to cope up with climate variability.
Livestock and fishery
interventions
Use of community lands for fodder production during droughts/floods, improved fodder/feed storage methods, feed supplements, micronutrient use to enhance adaptation to heat stress, preventive vaccination, improved shelters for reducing heat/cold stress in livestock, management of fish ponds/tanks during water scarcity and excess water are some key interventions in livestock/fishery sector.
Weather-based agro advisories
Automatic weather stations at KVK experimental farms and mini-weather observatories in project villages are established to record real time weather parameters such as rainfall, temperature and wind speed etc. both to issue customized agro advisories and improve weather literacy among farmers.
Institutional interventions
Institutional interventions either by strengthening the existing ones or initiating new ones relating to seed bank, fodder bank, commodity groups, custom hiring centre, collective marketing, introduction of weather index based insurance and climate literacy through a village level weather station are introduced to ensure effective adoption of all other interventions and promote community ownership of the entire programme.
A village committee representing all categories of farmers including women and the land less is formed with the approval of Gram Sabha to take all decisions regarding interventions, promote farmers participation and convergence with ongoing Government schemes relevant to climate change adaptation. VCRMC participates in all discussions leading to finalizing interventions, selection of target farmers and area, and liaison with gram panchyat and local elected representatives and maintain all financial transactions under the project.
(The author is Principal Scientist ICAR Research Complex, Umiam)
Concluded