Enhancing farmers’ income through integrated farming system: An economic review

Abstract

The farmers are sensitive to the economical benefits of the improved agricultural practices while adopting the practices for enhancing the income of farm families. Higher is the benefit obtained from the introduced enterprise combinations; the easier it is to motivate the farmers to adopt them in their farms. With the aim of doubling farmers' income, identification of suitable farming system is the need of the hour. It is a very complex and serious problem, when share of agriculture in gross domestic product is declining, average size of land holding is gradually shrinking and number of operational holdings is increasing. It is imperative to develop strategies that enable adequate income and employment generation, especially for small and marginal farmers who constitute large majority of the farming community. In this circumstances of decreasing land holding size, it is essential to integrate enterprises such as dairy, piggery, goatery, fishery, poultry, duckery, apiary, along with field and horticultural crops so as to make farming more remunerative and reliable options for the farmers. The literature related to integrated farming systems (IFS) has been reviewed carefully in terms of economic contribution, employment generation, vulnerability reduction and constraints in IFS.