Track 2‐6‐1: Developing Intensive and Extensive Forage Production with Environment Friendly Technologies and Adoption of Mechanization

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In order to meet the multiple objectives of poverty reduction, food security, competitiveness and sustainability several researchers have recommended to adopt integrated farming systems (IFS). IFS is an approach in which different landbased enterprises are integrated within the bio-physical and socio-economic situations taking farmers preference and goal in to consideration. This is a multi-disciplinary approach and very effective for solving the problems of small and marginal farmers (Gangwar, 1993). Under the gradual shrinking of land holding in India and other developing countries, it is necessary to go for IFS to make farming more profitable and sustainable. In agricultural research and development activities in India and other developing countries, the major emphasis is given to component and commodity based research projects This research have proved largely inadequate in addressing the multifarious problems of small farmers (Jha, 2003). Due to this, there has been a demand for holistic approach for technology generation and dissemination. However, mechanisms are lacking to provide the whole farm picture. Providing such a picture in the context of a farm or village or a region is a tedious process and difficult to calculate by human mind since number of factors are involved. Such problems can be overcome by the bio-economic modelling approaches. The research in IFS for the last few decades reveals that the enterprise planning and implementation needs scientific and systematic approach. In this situation, optimization techniques are useful for resource allocation and designing of IFS in a scientific basis (Mahapatra and Behera, 2004). Farming system studies involving a number of enterprises and taking the physical, socio-economic and bio-physical environments into consideration are complicated, expensive and time-consuming (Mahapatra and Behera, 2004). This is one of the reasons for slow progress in the field of farming systems research in India and elsewhere (Jha, 2003). This problem could be overcome by construction and application of suitable whole farm models (Dent, 1990). Optimization models optimize the use of farm resources, and can analyse farm response to policy change in an effective way (Loucks et al., 1981). Among available, linear programming (LP) is one of the most applied solution methodology in agricultural planning to determine the optimal policy (Loucks et al., 1981) in single and multiple objective framework. In this paper different bio-economic modelling techniques, which can help for optimal combination of the enterprises within the farming systems by taking farmers single and multi-objectives into consideration as well as an advanced modelling tool “MODAM” which has potentiality to integrate the environment and ecological goal with economic goal in the context of a farm/society or region are discussed briefly.

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Integrated Farming Systems in the Frame Work of Bio-Economic Modelling for Sustainable Development of Small and Marginal Farmers under Changing Climatic Scenario

In order to meet the multiple objectives of poverty reduction, food security, competitiveness and sustainability several researchers have recommended to adopt integrated farming systems (IFS). IFS is an approach in which different landbased enterprises are integrated within the bio-physical and socio-economic situations taking farmers preference and goal in to consideration. This is a multi-disciplinary approach and very effective for solving the problems of small and marginal farmers (Gangwar, 1993). Under the gradual shrinking of land holding in India and other developing countries, it is necessary to go for IFS to make farming more profitable and sustainable. In agricultural research and development activities in India and other developing countries, the major emphasis is given to component and commodity based research projects This research have proved largely inadequate in addressing the multifarious problems of small farmers (Jha, 2003). Due to this, there has been a demand for holistic approach for technology generation and dissemination. However, mechanisms are lacking to provide the whole farm picture. Providing such a picture in the context of a farm or village or a region is a tedious process and difficult to calculate by human mind since number of factors are involved. Such problems can be overcome by the bio-economic modelling approaches. The research in IFS for the last few decades reveals that the enterprise planning and implementation needs scientific and systematic approach. In this situation, optimization techniques are useful for resource allocation and designing of IFS in a scientific basis (Mahapatra and Behera, 2004). Farming system studies involving a number of enterprises and taking the physical, socio-economic and bio-physical environments into consideration are complicated, expensive and time-consuming (Mahapatra and Behera, 2004). This is one of the reasons for slow progress in the field of farming systems research in India and elsewhere (Jha, 2003). This problem could be overcome by construction and application of suitable whole farm models (Dent, 1990). Optimization models optimize the use of farm resources, and can analyse farm response to policy change in an effective way (Loucks et al., 1981). Among available, linear programming (LP) is one of the most applied solution methodology in agricultural planning to determine the optimal policy (Loucks et al., 1981) in single and multiple objective framework. In this paper different bio-economic modelling techniques, which can help for optimal combination of the enterprises within the farming systems by taking farmers single and multi-objectives into consideration as well as an advanced modelling tool “MODAM” which has potentiality to integrate the environment and ecological goal with economic goal in the context of a farm/society or region are discussed briefly.