The study attempted to critically review the status and scope of rice fallows in India, specifically to the Bhagalpur district of Bihar. Technological progress and capital-intensive cultivation through conversion of marginal lands mitigated the ever-increasing demand of food production for burgeoning population to some extent but a continuous expansion of fallow lands brought serious concern on policy dynamics. The changes in temporal and spatial distribution of fallow lands are mostly documented due to increasing variability in the precipitation and irrigation water, and low level of mechanization. However, this is not true in case of flood and drought prone areas, and state like Bihar, where farmers are financially weak and technological expansion is very limited. The results revealed that, the most important constraint for rice fallows was rainfed ecology, low soil moisture content after the harvest of paddy and lack of irrigation facilities. The farmers also identified lack of short duration and high yielding varieties, poor plant stand, no use of fertilizers and chemicals and severe weed infestation in the field as the other major constraints. The size of land holding was found positively significant with rice fallows area indicating that the income penalty of keeping land fallow could not be tolerated by marginal small farmers.

Highlights

• The study on current fallow and permanent fallows are very limited and the availability of data at regional level is very dearth.
• The seasonal fallow (rabi) after rice harvest in Bihar has ample scope for utilization through growing short duration pulses using residual moisture and reviving canal irrigation system.