Tuber Crop Based Farming System: An Approach to Boost up Livelihood of Marginal Farmers

Abstract

A research programme was conducted in the farmers’ field at Dhenususa, a village in Jorhat district ofAssam during 2013-14 to 2015-16. Initial data on land profile, production pattern and livelihooddata of the village were taken. The field used by the farmer for rice mono-cropping (0.26 ha) wastransformed to tuber crop based farming system model. Different components like tuber crops,floriculture, fruits, vegetables, fish, duck and dairy components were integrated for more income,employment and sustainability. A significant change occurred in rice equivalent yield, farm incomeand employment after intervention. The tuber crops contributed a major share in the farm income.Among the tuber crops the rice equivalent yield per unit area was maximum in the case of elephantfoot yam (4.80 kg m-2) due to higher productivity and better price followed by sweet potato (4.27 kgm-2), greater yam (3.84 kg m-2) and taro (2.77 kg m-2). Among the kharif field crops sugarcane(chewing type) had higher productivity (3.55 kg m-2) in terms of rice equivalent yield. In other horticulturalcrops banana produced maximum rice equivalent yield (8.50 kg m-2) in the IFS system followed byflower (5.59 kg m-2), ginger (5.50 k gm-2), winter vegetables (4.66 kg m-2) and lemon(4.25 kg m-2).The rice equivalent yield could be increased up to 28.42 t ha-1in a typical rice land from just 3.33 tha-1by converting the land into farming system model. This was about 8.5 times more than that ofprevious rice mono-cropping (861%) system. The tuber crop based farming system could generateadditional employment up to 615 days from previous employment status of 212 man days perhectare in a year. Hence, this model could change rice mono-cropping in marginal land holdings to asustainable farming module to attract and retain farmers in farming in agriculturally backward stateslike Assam.