Gender Role and Employment Opportunity Through Livestock Based Integrated Farming System
Lokesh Gautam *1 and Hina Ashraf Waiz 2
1Assistant Professor ,Animal Genetics and Breeding , College of veterinary & Animal Science, Udaipur, Rajasthan University of Veterinary & Animal Science, Bikaner, 334001, India
2Assistant Professor ,Livestock Production Management, College of veterinary & Animal Science, Udaipur, Rajasthan University of Veterinary & Animal Science, Bikaner, 334001, India
*Corresponding Author: lkgautam10@gmail.com, M.O. +91 9828961747
Introduction
Small and marginal farmers in rural India have a longstanding experience of using integrated livestock-based farming systems. For farmers to earn more money, crop-based agriculture must be diversified to include dairy, goatry, fishery, and duckery (Sahrmin et al., 2012). The farming method focuses a lot on recycling farm wastes. In an integrated farming system, several farming system components cooperate to achieve a higher overall productivity than the sum of their individual outputs. The efficiency of resource consumption is increased when the output from one enterprise becomes the input for another. For five to six months out of the year, agriculture offers seasonal work, while livestock rearing offers during the lean season (Patra et al., 2016).
Small and marginal farmers have the chance to increase their economic yield per unit area per unit time through livestock-based integrated farming. By linking the appropriate components, waste materials are effectively recycled in this system. Consequently, reduce environmental contamination. The integrated farming system’s recycling of goods, byproducts, and waste is what makes the farming system sustainable. Due to integration of different livestock components with crops, production of eggs, meat and milk provides nutritional security and income generation round the year to the farmers (Kumar et al., 2018). Combining crop with livestock enterprises would increase the labor requirement and helps in reducing the problems of under employment to greater extent. Livestock based integrated farming provides enough scope to engage family labor round the year. The nutritional security, natural resource management and environmental protection are the major concern for sustainable agriculture. Integration of livestock is the way forward to promote proper utilization of available resources and environment protection for economic growth .integrated livestock farming diversifies farm production, increases the income, improve nutritional security and promote nutrient recycling.
Gender role in integrated livestock farming system
In India, animals are a valuable resource for women. While buying property and other tangible things, as well as obtaining financing can be challenging for women, there are more there are more opportunities to acquire livestock (Including receipt of gifts or family inheritance, through development projects, or market purchases). In integrated livestock farming system, women handle many responsibilities because the male household members frequently work in distant agricultural fields or relocate during months when agriculture is scarce. As farms become more integrated, women become more active in farming operations, particularly those that generate revenue from home. Women are primarily found working in the following fields: rearing poultry, raising cattle, milch cows, rearing goats and sheep, sewing, growing and selling vegetables, and replanting in nurseries (Sharmin et al., 2012). Both access and control over the farm resources increase for farm women .Women do not need to travel far to get resources because many of them are produced on the farm, including fodder and chicken eggs. The women sell several farm products in local marketplaces as well, providing them with some cash income (Goswami and Dasgupta, 2014).
Employment opportunity through integrated livestock farming system
Integrated livestock farming system has many advantages include economic benefits in terms of increased food production, and social benefits in terms of provision of employment opportunities for excess labor force heading towards the urban areas. Integrated livestock farming system is labor-intensive, which generates on-farm employment. The farmer and their family provide the majority of the labor needed during the production process. Integrated livestock farming is reported to generate more man-days in the farm itself than conventional farming. Jayanthi et al. (2007) reported 575,950, 343 man-days ha-1 year-1, in a pond-based integrated farming system, respectively. Although adjusting for inflation is necessary when comparing such studies, this issue has not yet been the subject of a thorough meta-analysis. In addition to producing man-days, integrated livestock farming makes sure that employment is produced year-round, assuring a stable sink for the local labor force. Integrated livestock farming system will be a solution in this situation to lower the economic risk with better job creation. The ongoing labor requirement for a system of several crops and livestock offers a way to create more jobs and keeps farm families actively involved in farming activities. This holds good even during the COVID-19 pandemic for meeting the employment needs of reverse migrants (urban to rural). Since farming activities are ongoing in integrated livestock farming system throughout the year, the farm family is actively engaged in farming. The farm family can effectively participate in tasks such as daily animal care, fodder production, agro-ecotourism, the production of organic manures and their marketing, etc. According to Das et al. (2013), the crop-fish-pig (pig-based ILFS) and crop-fish-duck systems produce significantly more employment, revenue, and livelihood for farmers than crop alone.
Employment opportunities provided by integrated livestock farming (Parmesh et al,.2021)
| Probable areas | Job opportunities |
| Livestock and fodder component | · Caring for animals
· Maintaining fodder block of forages, legumes and azolla unit |
| Organic farming | · Production of organic inputs such as vermin-compost, compost
· Post-harvest farm-to- market supply chains · Value addition to organic produce to increase the income |
| Agro-ecotourism | · Linking tourism to traditional
· farming landscapes · Developing herbal gardens, biodiversity park, fish farms, fish spa |
| Management of resources | · Rising nurseries to supply planting material
· Participatory seed production to fetch higher market price · Planting diverse tree species and maintaining diverse economically important species |
Conclusion
Integrated livestock farming system has the power to assist smallholder systems in a variety of social, economic, gender and environmental ways. It supports smallholder farmers, lessens their vulnerability, ensures food security, job opportunities and boosts gender equality. ILFS must be viewed by the general public as a versatile socio-ecological intervention rather than a technology with a wide range of desired socio-economic-ecological results. These demands for understanding its multifaceted function and creating adaptable farming systems that are demand-driven and site-specific.
References
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