Vol. 11, Special Issue 4 (2022)

Author(s):
Habung Ali and YN Shivalingaiah

Abstract:
Arunachal Pradesh is the land of tribal people, where majority of them practices traditional farming systems such as jhum cultivation and terrace cultivation. However, their farming systems suffers from low production, marginality, fragility, labour intensive, lack of high yielding varieties, etc. Therefore, there is a requirement of holistic combination of horticulture crops, agriculture crops and livestocks enterprises which will boost farmers income and secure their livelihood. In this study, four major farming systems has been identified from Ziro-I and Ziro-II block of Lower Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh. A total of 200 farmers were selected as respondents, 50 farmers practicing each farming system. A comparative analysis was conducted on selected four major farming systems in order to identify the farmers performing best under different farming systems which can be further recommended for that particular region. For the comparative analysis Man Whitney U test was run and it was found that in Ziro-I block, ‘Kiwi+Paddy+Fishery+Piggery’ (mean rank 75.03) farming system perform better than ‘Paddy+Fishery+Piggery’ (mean rank 25.97). In Ziro-II block, ‘Large cardamom+Paddy+Piggery ‘(mean rank 74.95) farming system perform better than ‘Paddy+Piggery’ farming system (mean rank 26.05). When all four farming systems were compared using Kruskal Wallies, the mean score of ‘Kiwi+Paddy+Fishery+Piggery’ farming system was highest (163.47) followed by ‘Large cardamom+Paddy+Piggery ‘(132.75), ‘Paddy+Fishery+Piggery’ (66.96) and ‘Paddy+Piggery’ (38.82). Therefore, a combination of horticulture and livestock enterprises with the traditional farming system not only helps to increase farm income and profitability but also helps to preserve and conserve indigenous farming systems.