Author(s):

S Sarvade, AK Shrivastava, SK Rai, S Bisen, U Bisen, NK Bisen, SB Agrawal and Mohammad Imran Khan

Abstract: The study was carried out to examine the socio-economic status of farming communities, their knowledge on climate change and adoption of agroforestry systems in cluster of three villages of Balaghat District of Madhya Pradesh during 2017-19. Farming communities are mainly depending on the agriculture and dairy for their socio-economic upliftment. Average 5.7 persons were present in each farming communities. All the farmers rear 8-10 livestock for milk, meat and for farming. The 40-50% livestock population was accounted by milch animals i.e. cow and buffalo. Whereas, the farmers feed paddy and wheat straw as a dry fodder. More than 50% farmers were falls under marginal and small farmers’ category. The family income was highest from agriculture land use system (51-68%) as compared to other systems. The 56% farmers falls in medium, 22% under high, 15% under low and 7% under very low knowledge category of the awareness about climate change. Decrease in ground water level (95.83% farmers), erratic and sporadic rainfall (90.83% farmers) and increase in disaster events (76.67%) were the indicators of climate change on which most of the farmers aware about them, and ranked first, second and third, respectively. Increased use of vehicle (86.67%), over population (74.17%), industrialization and urbanization (72.50%) and increased use of insecticides/ pesticides/ fertilizers etc (65.00%) were the main causes of climate change. Afforestation and reforestation was the technology widely known amount the farmers (74.17% farmers). Around 56.67% farmers of the study area have medium whereas, 21.67% farmers has low, 12.5% farmers have least and 9.17% farmers has high knowledge about agroforestry. Most of the farmers practice agroforestry systems traditionally and this reason ranks 1st followed by systems can be practiced on degraded lands (2nd rank) and minimizing risk (diversified yield) ranks 3rd for the adoption of agroforestry systems. The 95.83% farmers thought about the legal issues regarding planting and felling of tree species, reduce yield of agriculture crops (89.17% farmers), allelopathic effect (84.17%), unavailability of quality planting material (79.17%), long time required for getting returns from tree species (75.83%) were the issues responsible for less adoption of agroforestry systems on commercial basis.

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