Technological interventions in natural farming for upliftment of natural farming in Sonitpur district of Assam, India

Abstract

In Assam, Natural Farming now-a-days is becoming increasingly popular among the smallholder farmers of Sonitpur district of Assam. The state has 272 lakhs farming households out of which 85.59 farming households are small and marginal having operational land holding of less than 1-2 hectares (Agricultural Census, 2010-11). So to obtain desirable changes in socio-economic life of its esteemed farming population, there must be adoption of all sustainable and profit earning technologies for boosting production and productivity in due space and time (Sarmah et.al., 2023). Natural farming practices are cost savings from not using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, as well as higher benefit from intercrops. Under natural farming system, three to four crops are cultivated or grown together on the same area, along with leguminous crops as intercrop in order to ensure that no piece of land is wasted and utilized properly (Laishram et. al.,2022). This article highlighted the activities of Mrs. Dipali Mandal, a lady farmer engaged with vegetable and flower cultivation since last fifteen years. By converting her entire farm (less than 1ha) under natural farming system since last three years, she could able to increase production by 30.55% over traditional farming by focusing mainly on the different cropping systems of natural farming and comparing the economics of natural farming (NF) with traditional farming (TF) systems. It is found in study that intercropping with leguminous crops is considered as one of the most important components of natural farming as it increases crop productivity and soil fertility through the atmospheric nitrogen fixation. The analytical results from soil samples collected from different locations of her farm reflected that there was incredible enrichment of soil in terms of organic carbon (0.86-0.89), available nitrogen (279.4 -288.5 kg/ha) and available potash (323.5-239.8 kg/ha). These studies revealed that the farm soils where natural farming practices were adopted, were exuberantly loaded with bacterial population (45x107 CFU/ml) in comparison to traditional farming (18.6x107 CFU/ml). The increase in soil organic carbon content might be attributed to the exuberant multiplication of microbes in the soil under natural farming system (Debabrata, 2019) [6].