Vegetable intervention for livelihood and nutritional security of small landholders: key component for enhancing the income of farmers

Abstract

Growing vegetable crops in Mewat poses a serious challenge due to its agro-climatology and edaphic characteristics. The main occupation of inhabitants in Mewat is agriculture and allied agro-based activities. Seeing the importance of area, an attempt was made to introduce vegetables cultivation at commercial level to increase the income of farmers and improve their livelihood condition. The introduction of crops, like tomato, brinjal and bottlegourd in Mewat has enhanced the farmer's income significantly and it has attained commercial status. Though income and yield enhancement was recoded at every farmer's level but some farmers who were mainly landless and practicing vegetable farming on rented land could increase their profit to a record level in a period of 3 years from 2011 to 2013. On an average basis in tomato, brinjal and bottlegourd, the yield increased up to 58%, 44% and 82% and profitability up to 49%, 48% and 55% respectively. If other interventions like, drip irrigation, Integrated Pest and Nutrient Management (IPM and INM), polyhouse cultivation, off-season nursery and vegetable production, efficient post-harvest handling with cool chain facilities, value addition and processing, contract farming etc. are added, the income and profitability may increase many folds. On over all basis, bottlegourd variety Pusa Naveen, brinjal variety Pusa Uttam and tomato hybrids Heemsohna and US 2853 were most demanding and fetched higher prices due to their high yield and fruit quality attributes. Therefore, it was proved that vegetable production is the emerging sector in agricultural diversification that would augment income of smallholders and generate employment opportunities in rural areas.