Farm diversification for sustainable agriculture/by Ravi Kumar Theodore, G. Selvaraj [and] D.David Rajasekar

In 1987 the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) called attention to the immense problems and challenges facing world agriculture. The agricultural systems that have been build up over the past few decades have contributed greatly to the alleviation of hunger and the raising of living standards. They have served their purposes up to a point. New realities reveal their inherent contradictions and their inabilities to achieve sustainable agriculture These realities require agricultural systems that focus as much attention on people as they do on technology, as much systems can contribute to meet the challenge of achieving sustainable agricultural development in the future.

As a development strategy, agricultural diversification creates opportunities for achieving higher and more stable rural incomes through the more efficient use of resources and the exploitation of comparative advantage. The World Bank has pointed out the among the developments in the agricultural sector the two notable ones are the increasing awareness of and concern about the impact of current production practices on the environment and the world market is characterized by shifting consumer demands. It adds that agricultural diversification helps to stem further environmental degradation through the establishment of multicommodity production systems that are not only economically profitable, but also environmentally sound; and since the world market has become more competitive, and consumption patterns of communities are shifting away from more traditional'staples toward higher demands for livestock products, fruits and vegetables, diversification becomes imperative.

The present study was undertaken with the hypothesis that "farm diversification leads to sustainable agriculture". The 'Introduction' chapter presents the challenges and inherent problems facing Indian agriculture; the dangers of pursuing extensive and intensive agriculture: and the need for farm diversification for sustainable agricultural development. The 'Theoretical Orientation' chapter, based on literature. establishes the fact that farm diversification helps to achieve sustainable agriculture. The third chapter ie., 'Research Methodology describes the research design, sampling procedure, study area, procedure developed to measure sustainable agriculture and statistical tools used in the study, the 'Results and Discussion' chapter presents the findings of the study in a logical order. Appropriate analysis of the findings has been done to draw meaningful conclusions. Empirical models to improve the economic and ecological efficiency and sustinability of wetland farms are also proposed in this chapter. The last chapter deals with the 'Summary and Conclusion'. Policy implications are also drawn based on the results for consideration by development planners.