Adaptive Crop Agriculture Including Innovative Farming Practices in ...

8. Conclusion
This is an adaptive research on agriculture that looked into the suitability of alternative
cropping practices through technological innovation and adoption of piloting of some non
popular/ non-practiced rabi crops to address flash floods. Haor is a single cropped area and
suitable for winter farming. Duration of the research activity was only one year therefore all
the piloting took place during November 2007 to April 2007. This year was found a bit
abnormal in the context of some climatic parameters such as temperature and rainfall which
impacted test crops with a great extent. Usually, agriculture research needs at least 3 years of
time to pilot same thing in 3 consecutive years to have a real picture that can lead to a
conclusion of the findings. But in this case, it is difficult to make any clear and concrete
decision.
The research identified many crops which were found technically suitable for haor area to
address flash floods. But there are many social issues that need to be taken care of under
research for wider dissemination of the findings. These issues include technology transfer,
market, availability of seeds, protection of crops in the kanda lands from cattle, etc. Kanda
lands are found very suitable for many crops. Usually theses lands remain fallow and some
parts of the land are used as cattle grazing. Therefore, initiative of few numbers of farmer
cannot protect cattles from their farm plots.
In recent times, farmers feel that rice is less profitable and more risky crop. Traditionally,
farmers use long duration and local rice variety, which are vulnerable to flashflood and
hailstorm. All most every year, haor farmers experience damage of winter rice by flash
floods. Though rice production is found less profitable, but the local farmers have been
practicing rice cultivation because they are used to this. In recent times, they are trying to
come out from this situation. According to farmers, they need short duration and high
yielding rice variety and other alternative short duration profitable winter crops. In addition,
they need some vegetable crops for fallow land and homestead adjacent area and /or any new
technologies which would save their crops and would sustain their farming system. From the
research demonstration, maximum involved farmers realized that this type of farming is
needed and it was appreciated by all farmers and they accepted the research result with trust.
From the next year, they want to cultivate short duration rice variety and adopting new age
controlling techniques in case of long duration variety. In addition, other alternative robi
crops for comparatively highland and kanda land would be cultivated by the local farmers.
Some crops were also recommended for fallow and homestead adjacent land. Local farmers
believe that they can earn more profit with less risk by cultivating these crops. It was
suggested that the farmers would take some precautions against the climate condition
following the adaptive cultivation methods. As the research was a ‘Need Based Solution’ to
the local farmers, the haor region people accepted the result for improving their livelihoods.
However, implementation of the recommendations need further study in different
ecologically characterized areas of haor, considering socio-cultural practices, developing
technological packages and disseminating packages to the farmers, which were beyond the
scope of this research.
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