Chapters authored
Vermicomposting: A Step towards Sustainability
Agricultural production depends on so many things. Proper nutrient management is one of them. It becomes a trend to apply excess amount of fertilizer for enhancing productivity without considering its effect on soil health. Vermicomposting is a process of scientifically decomposing agricultural, municipality, and industrial wastes into nutrient enriched compost by earthworms. Vermicompost not only balance underground soil environment and makes is a suitable habitat for soil micro biota but also improves above ground environment. Microbes are the fundamental element of ecosystem. Use of vermicompost increases growth and proliferation of microbes that amplify environment’s betterment. Vermicomposting is also affordable for resource poor small and marginal farmers. Therefore, vermicompost use is more economical than synthetic organic fertilizer. So, economic viability, environmental stability, and enhancing livelihood quality are the major causes for its worldwide adoption in food production.
Part of the book: Sustainable Crop Production
Crop Diversification an Effective Strategy for Sustainable Agriculture Development
Sustainable agricultural practices involve a variety of approaches. The most important approached for sustainable agriculture development is crop diversification. It allowing the farmers to employ biological cycles to minimize inputs, conserve the resource base, maximize yields and also reduce the risk due to ecological and environmental factors. It serves as an important opportunity to augment income and employment generation for rural communities. Crop diversification promotes the interaction of beneficial soil bacteria, interrupts the disease cycle, and reduces the quantity of weeds. Crop diversification boosts land-use efficiency and crop output by improving the physical and chemical qualities of soil. Crop diversification shows a lot of scope to alleviating the problems such as resurgence of insects-pests and weeds, soil degradation, environmental pollution, soil salinity, decline farm profit and climate change. Crop diversification through crop intensification system enhanced the net returns, B:C ratio, and overall system productivity of a farm. In order to achieve the benefits of crop diversification farmers are shifting from low value low yielding crops to high value high yielding crops. Thus, crop diversification has the sound capacity for achieving the goal of nutritional security, income growth, food security, employment generation and sustainable agriculture development.
Part of the book: Sustainable Crop Production