Integrated farming system for enhancing income, profitability and employment opportunities

The operational farm holding in India is declining and over 85 million out of 105 million are below the size of 1 ha. Due to ever increasing population and decline in per capita availability of land in the country, practically there is no scope for horizontal expansion of land for agriculture. Only vertical expansion is possible by integrating farming components requiring lesser space and time and ensuring reasonable returns to farm families. The integrated farming system (IFS) therefore assumes greater importance for sound management of farm resources to enhance the farm productivity, reduce the environmental degradation, improve the quality of life of resource poor farmers and maintain sustainability. KVKs are thriving hard to empower farmers towards entrepreneurship through a combination of technological interventions for their betterment at macro- and micro-level trade, economy, health and happiness. This paper entails information on IFS adopted by 3 farmers in the Bhawaniptana block of Kalahandi district of Odisha promoted by Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Kalahandi under Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology for two consecutive years from 2011-12 to 2012-2013. All the integrated farming systems analyzed were crop-based (fruits, vegetables, pulses etc) integrations involving dairy, duckery and fish as major enterprises. In case of farmer 1, the net profit obtained from IFS was Rs 298000 with a B:C ratio of 2.5:1 from 5 acres of land. He created employment opportunities of 845 man days for males and 250 man days for females from various enterprises.  In case of farmer 2 net profit obtained was Rs 352300 with a B:C ratio of 4.7:1 and he created employment opportunities of 750 man days for males and 345 man days for females  from various enterprises. Similarly in case of farmer 3, net profit of Rs 290700 was obtained  with a B:C ratio of 2.96:1 and he created employment opportunities of 995 man days for males and 285 man days for females  from integrated farming of different enterprises.