Vol. 8, Issue 3 (2019)

Author(s):
Vikas Gupta, Dileep Kachroo, Meenakshi Gupta, BC Sharma, Anil Kumar, R Puniya, Mahender Singh, Neeraj Gupta and Monika Banotra

Abstract:
Crop production on dry and marginal lands particularly results in low, unstable and uneconomic yields. Marginal and dry lands due to the poor management and low or nil addition of organic/inorganic fertilizers are often subjected to the processes of degradation and fewer crop yields. Nearly 60-70 per cent of total land under rainfed cultivation is facing some kind of land degradation or the other. These marginal lands are not able to sustain arable crops particularly during the drought years. The farm management strategies of these areas are to be replanned, so that the poor and marginal farmers may get some assured returns even under drought years. The alternate land use systems are surer means of stabilizing both productivity of dryland and incomes of dryland farmers, besides generating more complement potential. Day by day demand for food fodder and fuel is growing, which could be solved by selecting suitable land use system, improvement of degraded, marginal and sub-marginal lands by introduction of suitable alternate land use systems. In the semi-arid regions of India the main benefit of alley cropping is fodder production during the dry season because mulching in alleys with hedgerow prunings does not consistently increase crop production. Agricultural development in hills is constrained by lack of appropriate technology, inadequate infrastructure, poor input-output marketing, insufficient extension education and network and decrease in area for forest dwellers and great diversity in farming systems/land-use type. Traditional agriculture is practiced whichcombines crop production with livestock, horticulture and farm forestry/agro-forestry in an integrated fashion, which is adapted to the limitations of climatic and edaphic conditions. Under silviculture system, available nitrogen increased by 110 kg/ha in surface layer over fallow land. The increase in the available P in the surface layer was 8.3 kg/ha, 6.4 kg/ha, 5.2 kg/ha, 7.6 kg/ha, 1.9 kg/ha in soils under silvi-agriculture, agri-horticulture, silvi-pasture, silviculture, pasture and agriculture systems respectively over the fallow land. Hence, it can be safely concluded that different alternate land use systems in association with crops, livestock or other factors of agricultural production, holds great promise for contributing to sustainable land–use systems which can overcome the problem of land degradation and the imminent “food crisis”. It also provides diversified production and consequently greater food diversity.