Crop Livestock Integration and Sustainable Livelihood in Rural Assam

This paper has looked into the potential of integrating crop and livestock in rural Assam for sustainable livelihood with the help of secondary information from statistical data sources and other literature survey. With the increasing number of marginal and small farmers and occurrence of climatic changes, the vulnerability of livelihood in rural Assam is gradually increasing and integration of livestock production and farming practices is found to be the only solution for livelihood security. The changing consumer basket with preference for livestock products and positive income elasticity of livestock goods has opened up a good scope for livestock development in rural Assam. The individual performance of various sectors of livestock — cattle, pig, poultry and fishing — has been analyzed separately. It has indicated that without structural transformation in employment of Assam, non-farm activities like poultry and piggery have shown an increasing trend during 1971–72 to 2002–03. The contribution of fishery to Assam economy has improved. The paper has observed that infrastructural support system of rural Assam will have to be worked out, keeping in focus the integration of crop and adoption of livestock and correct management strategy.