• Energy Research
• agricultural and veterinary science... close

AbstractDue to complexity of smallholder farms, many times technologies with great potential fail to achieve the desired impact in leveraging productivity and profitability of the farming community. In the Indo-Gangetic Plains there is an urgent need to understand the diversity of farm households, identifying the main drivers deciding their system thus, classifying them into homogenous groups. In the present study, the diversity of smallholder farms was assessed using crop, livestock and income related characteristics and associated farm mechanization. Using principal component analysis and cluster analysis for 252 farm households, 4 farm types were identified i.e. Type 1. Small Farm households with cereal-based cropping system and subsistence livestock (39%), Type 2. Small Farm households with diversified cropping system dominated by cereal and fodder crops with only cattle herd (9%), Type 3. Marginal Farm household with diversified cropping system dominated by cash crop and herd comprising of only cattle (39%), Type 4. Marginal Farm household with diversified cropping system dominated by cereal crops and herd dominated by small ruminants (12%). Based on the constraints identified for different components of farming systems, low-cost interventions were planned for each farm type. These interventions have resulted in 84.8–103.2 per cent increase in the income of the farm HH under study suggesting usefulness of typology-based intervention planning in increasing income of small farm holders.

Achieving an economically feasible and environmentally robust model in agriculture while satisfying the expanding population’s food demands is a global challenge. Hence, a three-year (2014–2017) study was conducted at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana to design environmentally clean, energy-efficient, and profitable cropping systems. Twelve cropping systems viz., rice-wheat (CS1), basmati rice-hayola (transplanted)-mung bean (CS2), basmati rice-radish-maize (CS3), maize-potato-maize (CS4), maize + turmeric-barley + linseed (CS5), maize + turmeric-wheat + linseed (CS6), maize + radish-wheat + linseed-mung bean (CS7), groundnut + pigeon pea (5:1)-wheat + sarson (9:1) (CS8), maize + black gram-pea (bed) + celery (furrows) (CS9),: maize + pigeon pea-chickpea (bed) + gobhi sarson (furrows) (CS10), maize (green cobs) + vegetable cowpea + dhaincha (Sesbania spp.)-chickpea + gobhi sarson (CS11) and sorghum + cowpea (fodder)-wheat + gobhi sarson (9:1) (CS12) were tested in a four-times-replicated randomized block design. CS11 had the maximum system productivity (28.57 Mg ha−1), production efficiency (78.27 Kg Day−1 ha−1), irrigation water use efficiency (2.38 kg m−3), system net returns (4413.3 US$ ha−1), and benefit to cost (B:C) ratio (2.83) over others. In comparison to the CS1 system, this cropping system required ~78% less irrigation water for a unit economic production. However, the cultivation of CS12 registered the highest energy use efficiency (49.06%), net energy returns (6.46 × 103 MJ ha⁻¹), and global warming potential (GWP) (Mg CO2 e ha−1) at spatial scale. Among all the intensified systems, CS11 had the lowest GHGI (0.29 kg CO2 e kg−1). Furthermore, cultivation of CS6 resulted in the maximum bacterial and actinomycetes population in the soil, while CS5 yielded the highest fungal count (23.8 × 103 cfu g−1 dry soil) in soil. Our study suggests that the cultivation of CS11 is a resource-efficient, economically viable, and environmentally clean production system and could be a potential alternative to rice-wheat systems for developing a green economy policy for agricultural development in the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) of India.