Role of integrated farming system in increasing farmer's income and employment

JM Laishram / L Nabachandra Singh *

Ensuring food, nutrition and livelihood security through agriculture without causing negative externalities on social, economic and environmental sustainability is a challenge to agriculture and rural development in developing nations. This has become even more important in the context of ever-increasing pressure on natural resources and globalization of agri-food chains.

In the face of encroachment of land for intensive agriculture, industrialization and urbanization in the first half of the 21 st century, both economic and natural resource policy now need to be interlinked with smallholder agriculture. The proposition is to promote sustainable farming systems for smallholders - following agroecological principles as a poverty alleviation strategy.

During the height of the Green Revolution and even after its ill-effects started to prop up, the concept of integrated/biodiverse/agroecological farming received little attention worldwide, perhaps due to its presumed subsistence nature.

In the early years of the new millennium, consensus started growing around the proposition that small family farms are going to play a crucial role in shaping the future employment, energy demand and food sovereignty of the world.

This is important, since the number of small and marginal farms is on the rise throughout the developing nations and many of them are leaving their ancestral vocations, since little incentive holds them back to farming.

The situation becomes harsh in marginal and less integrated environments, where most of the poor people live. Future of agriculture and rural poverty alleviation depends on how we ensure food, nutrition and livelihood security through sustainable and integrated family fanning, which is resilient to uncertainties of open markets and climatic variability.

The challenge to increase food production is not only to feed consumers, but to maintain dietary balance also. In developing nations, with industrialization and commercialization of different production systems, people now have more expendable cash in hand to be spent on food posing a challenge to the food production system aiming to meet socially acceptable and nutritionally appropriate demand for food.

Integrated Farming Systems (IFS) employ a unique resource management strategy to help achieve economic benefit and sustain agricultural production without undermining the resource base and environmental quality.

Due to various reasons, such as decreasing farm income, reduced soil fertility, market demand, climatic variability, employing family labour etc., farmers of complex agroecosystems have developed some unique integrated farming systems, which are resilient to such multiple changes.

Investing in such farming ensures that the growth in agriculture is inclusive, pro-poor, and environmentally sustainable and this can also be the most effective route to bring about economic growth and poverty reduction, with enhanced resilience of small farmers to disasters.

This is particularly important since sustainable intensification of small farms is now considered to be of critical need for feeding the future generation. It is time to reckon these integrated systems as units of planning for effective natural resource management.

Benefits of Integration in Farming System

Sustainable agriculture in developing countries emphasizes food security and sustainability of smallholder farmer livelihoods, as opposed to food safety and convenience for consumer livelihoods and environmental protection in developed countries. That is why the role of IFS must be appreciated within the context of smallholders of developing countries. Although there might be numerous multi-functional benefits of IFS, I have taken up four among them as listed below:

1. Integrated farming system and farm income:

IFS is reported to fetch higher farm income and profitability than conventional farming in small holder systems of the developing world. By increasing the provision of animals and fish, IFS generate higher cash income. It is also reported to achieve low cost of production and thus increase farmer's net income without disturbing productivity concerns.

Since it adds to the sustainability of the system (by ensuring local sourcing of agricultural inputs), the income from IFS is expected to be stable over years. Hence, IFS may break the subsistence blockade for many marginal farmers and help in maintaining investment in regional agriculture. The components in an IFS greatly determined the extent of farm income, its stability and equitable distribution across seasons.

Crop-livestock-fish system or crop-livestock system is reported to give higher net return than crop-based systems alone. However, the amount of income is difficult to be interpreted due to the variation in space and time. Reports in Indian context in the last ten years suggest an income range of IRR 55,000 per annum to INR 80000 per annum.

Nevertheless, a sound meta-analysis would have given a better estimate of the gross return from IFS. Apart from increasing the farm production, IFS even out the risks and uncertainties of income from conventional cropping and reduces the time lag between investment and returns. Regular and evenly distributed income throughout the year renders the farm resilient to uncertainties and reduces vulnerability against climatic and market variations.

2. Integrated farming system and food security

Among the major challenges the world faces today, the urgency of providing food security to the growing human population and slowing down the quick loss of irreplaceable biological diversity appear most prominent. IFS, often developed traditionally, maintains productivity of the farm, the availability of diverse food items throughout the year so that all members of the household are fed sustainably.

Even if we measure food security by dietary diversity, apart from the predominant energy intake approach, IFS would provide better food diversity than conventional farming. In that sense, IFS addressed the issue of food security in a holistic manner.

IFS results in improved household food consumption, especially for the vulnerable family members through provisioning of animal proteins and vegetable/fruits. Although an empirical account of food intake in IFS is not very common, it is reported to increase food security in wide contexts. Indirectly, improved income naturally contributes to higher food consumption and food security.

3. Integrated farming system, employment opportunity

Some authors have summarized the multifaceted benefits of IFS to include economic benefits in terms of increased food production, and social benefits in terms of provision of employment opportunities for excess labour force heading towards the urban areas. IFS is labour intensive, which creates on-farm employment and most of the labour required in the production process is contributed by the farmer and his family members.

IFS is reported to generate more man-days in the farm itself than conventional farming, the figures although varying widely across systems. Where Behera et al. (1999) reported more than 450 man days ha-1 year-1 in a pond based integrated farming system, Ramrao et al. (2005) and Solaiappan et al. (2007) reported 575,950 and 343 man days ha-1 year-1 respectively in mixed integrated systems.

Although adjustment for inflation is required for comparing such reports, there is no systematic meta-analysis addressing this issue. Apart from generating mandays, IFS ensures that the employment is generated throughout the year, ensuring a steady sink for the local labour force.

4. Integrated farming system and energy efficiency

In developing countries, major sources of farm energy expenditure are fertilizer, and farm machinery. Since integrated farms are relatively less mechanized and encourage the use of internal inputs, energy use is much lower in integrated farms compared to conventional farms. Integrated farms (a form of sustainable farming) are mostly found in smaller farms, which have higher energy efficiency in general.

Moreover, many of these integrated farms are subsistence and involve less mobility in and around the farm, thus saving human energy and energy associated with transportation of farm produce.

Empirical evidence in different parts of the globe suggest that integrated systems are the most efficient in terms of energy efficiency (Bailey et al., 2003; Alluvione et al., 2011) and this input output ratio of energy varies greatly in different systems. Deike et al., (2008) observed a ratio of 15-17 in the European context, where Channabasavanna et al. (2010) reports a ratio of 6.40 in southern India.


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