Book of Extended summaries ISDA

International Conference on Reimagining Rainfed Agro-ecosystems: Challenges &
Opportunities during 22-24, December 2022 at ICAR-CRIDA, Hyderabad
In spite of about 68% of non-food and 48% of the food cropped area under rainfed agriculture
this ecosystem has historically not garnered the public and public policy makers' imagination
in India. And within the rainfed areas, multi-cropping systems i.e., “growing more than one
crop on the same piece of land during one calendar year” are relatively underexplored by the
National Agricultural Research System (Beets 1975). These systems present an alternative to
the dominant green revolution paradigm of agriculture. This exploratory study was hence
undertaken to understand the design and features of indigenous multi-cropping systems of
India.
Methodology
The first step of the study involved identification of cropping system that has features like
multi-cropping, one time sowing with multiple harvests at multiple times, multi-tier canopy,
extended period of soil cover, selection of specific phenotypes etc. A detailed documentation
of the selected cropping system was carried out by the research partners viz. NGOs and
independent researchers after its selection by an expert panel consisted of senior researchers
from NARS and NGOs.
Between February and March 2022, research partners documented the following information
of each cropping systems: cropping pattern, crop calendar, layout of the field, crop-risk
mapping, time trends, soil and dietary nutrient flows and resource mapping.
Multiple research methods employed in the study for documenting the aforementioned
features include review of literature, focus group discussions, key informant interviews,
visual documentation of the cropping practices (where it is still in practice).The twelve
cropping systems and their locations documented in this study.
Mixed Indigenous Cropping Systems Documented in the Present Study
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Ecosystem based approaches for climate change adaptation, ecosystem services, integrated farming system models,
Land degradation neutrality