Year: 2016 | Month: September | Volume 61 | Issue 3
How socially sustainable are the rice farms in mountains? Evidence from Senapati district of Manipur
DOI:10.5958/0976-4666.2016.00059.0
Abstract:
Sustainable agriculture is regarded as the successful management of resources for agriculture to satisfy the changing human needs while maintaining or enhancing the quality of environment and conserving natural resources. The present study was conducted to examine the social sustainability of rice farming at farm level. A random sample of 80 rice farmers of Senapati (hill) district of Manipur were surveyed and social sustainability index were constructed following the Human Development Index (HDI). Most of the farmers (26%) were educated up to primary level and operational land holding was small (1.08 ha) in the study area. The farms under moderately sustainable category may be improved by providing training to the farmers pertaining to rice cultivation and affiliating them to Self-help Groups (SHGs), co-operative societies. Joint decisions on domestic decisions are common and the farmers had 12 years of experience in rice farming but none of the sample farmers got training in rice cultivation. About 53.33 per cent of the farms were in sustainable category, followed by moderately sustainable category (46.67%) in the study area. The study recommends that efforts for improving social sustainability and training pertaining rice cultivation should be initiated for the farmers and application of organic nutrients, diversified cropping system and conservative tillage practices should be promoted in the study area to augment social sustainability.
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