Farming System approach for Enhancing Productivity, Profitability and Climate resilience in Rainfed Smallholders

Single-commodity intensification often dominated in small holder of semi-arid region, which leads to low productivity and negative environmental impacts. The farming system approach is a holistic tool to solve multifarious problems of mono-cropping through diversification that enhances farm income, production and employment. A field study was conducted at All India Coordinated Research Project for Dryland Agriculture, Dr Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth during 2023 to study the impact of rainfed integrated rainfed farming system for productivity, profitability, carbon emission and sustainability with conventional system. This IFS model produced Seed Cotton Equivalent Yield (SCEY) of 5127 kg/ha. Among the enterprises, livestock contributed the highest (54.81%) to system productivity followed by crops (24.61%) and lowest in boundary plantation (0.92). Whereas conventional system recorded system productivity of 1944 kg/ha which is 2.53 times less productive than rainfed integrated farming system. Likewise, the mean annual net return of the RIFS model was ₹2,06,009, wherein livestock component contributing the highest (62.30%) followed by crops (24.37%) along with employment generation of 248 man-days ha ^− 1 year ^− 1 . This system was 3.93 more remunerative in terms of net return and capable of generating 254.3 percentages increase in employment over conventional system. This model sequestrated about 14262.92 kg CO ₂ -equivalent sink through horticulture and ALU components (9565.32 kg CO2-equivalent) with incorporated biomass/compost manures (4697.6 kg CO ₂ -equivalent). Thus, RIFS achieved a 20.42-fold decrease in GHG emission. The results indicated that with diversified cropping system, horticulture, ALU, livestock, compost, kitchen garden, farm pond and boundary plantation is smart climate option for small farmers in the study area to enhance the productivity, profitability, climate resilience to bring sustainability in small holder of rainfed farming.