by D.S. Thakur
Professor of Agricultural Economics
Regional Research Station, Bajaura

The income of farmers can be raised further through the adoption of IIHFS, as shown on the Income Comparison page. In general, farmers follow a mixed cropping type of farming system.

However, depending upon their major source of income, four farming systems are traceable, namely:

• foodgrain based
• dairy based
• vegetable based
• and horticulture based

along with their subsystems and income. Apart from combination of different crops and income thereof and the overall average income depicted on the income page, farmers have been made to adopt various other farm and non-farm subsystems (enterprises or activities) as a part of IIHFS to further enhance their income substantially.

Depending upon their preferences, resources, manpower and availability of training facilities and market, farmers can take up all of them on small scale or some of them on large scale to increase their production and income significantly.

The average annual income of farmers, which was only Rs. 57,651 from their existing farming system primarily based on crops, has gone up to Rs. 1.74 lakhs, say Rs. 2 lakhs or so with the improved cropping systems and the IIHFS.

The vegetable based farming system gives the highest income of Rs. 2.55 lakhs followed by horticulture, dairy and foodgrain based farming systems. The Income Comparison page also shows that with declining size of holdings and the fact that more land will not be available for cultivation, non-farm sources of income are becoming more important for farm families and it will be more so along with intensification of farming under the IIHFS in future.