Socio-economic impact of conservation agriculture technology in Jabalpur district of Madhya Pradesh

Abstract

Conservation agriculture (CA) is an eco-friendly and resource saving approach of farming which restore soil fertility, improve moisture conservation, increase infiltration rate, improve soil organic carbon, micro-organism activity and reducing labor needs, that ensures increased crop productivity and reduces total cost of cultivation. The CA technology in Rice-Wheat cropping has significant impact in the Jabalpur district of Madhya Pradesh where sowing of wheat through conventional practices using tillage and mono cropping, resulted in reduction of yield. The survey of purposively selected 80 adopters and 80 non-adopters of CA has clearly established socio-cultural, psychological and economic gains by reflecting 13 and 15 per cent improvement in Rice and Wheat productivity respectively. Further, the scanning of socio-economic data indicated that CA had sense of achievement, merit for promotion, technical feasibility, stress reduction and opportunity for custom hiring services.