Author(s):

Bidyapati Thangjam and KK Jha

Abstract: Rice is the second most cultivated crop in India. It is grown in the eastern and western shoreline areas, drainage basin of Ganga river and Northeast India. In Manipur, rice is a dominant kharif crop by holding 90% of the Gross Cropped Area (GCA). It is important to understand the challenges faced by farmers in rice cultivation to ensure sustainable rice production. Prioritization of farmer’s problems can make easier to target and fix the issues of sustainable production of rice by the farmers. Therefore the study was carried out in Imphal West and Bishnupur district of Manipur to evaluate the socio-economic attributes of rice growers and identify the major constraints faced in adoption of sustainable rice cultivation. Four community blocks namely Imphal West-I and Imphal West-II from Imphal West district and Bishnupur and Moirang from Bishnupur district were selected purposively according to their relative importance in improved rice cultivation (Singh et al. 2017a; Singh et al. 2017b; Singh et al. 2017c; Singh et al. 2018; Tiwari et al. 2018; Tiwari et al. 2019a; Tiwari et al. 2019b; Kour et al. 2019; Singh et al. 2019). A list of villages growing rice under the selected blocks was prepared and two villages from each C.D blocks were selected randomly. Thus a total of eight villages were selected for the study. Finally, among the rice cultivators, 20 farmers were selected from each village based on random sampling procedure making a sample size of 160 respondents. The primary data were collected using a personal interview schedule. The findings of the study revealed that high cost of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, lack of agricultural credit facility, lack of knowledge about fertilizer management, unavailability of fertilizers on time, lack of information about government schemes, lack of irrigation facility, non-availability of water storage tank, lack of awareness about rainwater harvesting technique, perceive increase temperature, increases the risk of diseases and pest due to climate change pattern, irregular rainfall and rising temperature felt reduction of crop yield, sale of agricultural product through middleman and non availability of direct market facility were the major problems faced by the majority of farmers in sustainable rice cultivation. The study suggested that an effort to address sustainable rice cultivation should be promoted by popularizing climate resilient agricultural technologies thereby reducing the constraints and increasing sustainability in rice farming.

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