Constraints Faced by Farmers in Adopting Land and Water Management Practices in Diversified Farming Settlements

A study was carried out in two representative villages’ viz. Parulia and Kumirpara of Burdwan district of West Bengal, India, with the objective of identifying and prioritizing the existing constraints faced by farmers that hindered their adoption of land and water management practices in diversified farming settlements. Simple random sampling without replacement technique was employed to select 60 respondents from each village, thus constituted 120 respondents for the study. In both the villages, rice based farming system was dominant irrespective of the farm size. Several constraints in adopting land and water management practices were identified, categorized and multiple responses were taken from the respondents in order to prioritize those constraints. The study revealed that the major constraints reported by respondents regarding adoption of land management practices were lack of awareness, low market price of output, non availability of credit on time, non availability as well as high price of inputs, non availability of transportation and seasonal variation. Regarding water management, lack of technical knowhow, guidance about rainwater harvesting techniques, lack of irrigation sources, higher cost of construction of pond, lack of optimal tillage operations, lack of interest in cleaning up canals and non availability of mulching materials were the major constraints faced by the respondents in the study area. Majority of respondents agreed that adopting land and water management practices has good prospects towards sustainable production and farm income.