Sustainability of Agricultural Development in Jhabua District of Madhya Pradesh

The impact of modernisation through industrialisation has resulted in environmental and ecological degradation in peripheral resource hinterlands in hilly regions. The tribes, unable to find economic sustenance in forest habitats, have, in majority, adapted to extensive agricultural practices as main economic base of the community. The anthropogenic forces have dominance and succession over the resources through modern forestry, mining and quarrying activities and the industrial, trade and service activities. The increasing pressure of population of the local communities on agriculture and the drought condition and fluctuating rainfall has led to social and economic unsustainability of the agriculture and resulted in increasing food and livelihood insecurities, poverty and increasing inaccessibility to the local resources and modern economic activities. It is necessary to restore the agricultural ecosystems in the hilly regions through conservation and development of resources and increase the resource use efficiencies and farm productivities of different cropping systems through horizontal and vertical diversification, integration and specialization of the organic productive systems, so as to increase the cropping and ecological intensities to minimize the environmental risks and economic uncertainties at the farm levels in different activity zones in geographical landscape. The research work under Ph. D programme has attempted to develop a sustainable development model of agriculture for hilly and tribal areas. The agricultural development in Jhabua district has been studied in view of population ecology, farm ecology and farm productivity in different ecologic-economic zones. The study has used inter-regional analysis of the agricultural ecosystems in inter-tahsil analysis in macro ecological-economic framework and with the sample villages in different activity zones in the sample tahsils in micro ecologic-economic framework. The eco-regional modeling of agricultural system has been made by selecting indicators of its subsystems, e.g. population ecology, environment, infrastructure and agricultural ecology with the structural variables for agro-ecosystem analysis and evaluation of the status in the study periods 1990-91 and 2004-05. The composite indices have been used for analysis of regional variation in the level of agricultural development and identify the instrumental variables for strategic policy decisions for agro-eco restoration and faster economic growth in functional and spatial framework. The technique of factor analysis has been used for this purpose. At the micro-levels, the village ecosystems and farm ecosystems have been studied to investigate the problems and prospects of the development by selecting representative sample villages in geographical landscape framework in different activity zones with increasing distance from the main market centres to the hinterland agricultural, animal husbandry and forestry zones in hierarchic order. Public opinion and perceptions have been analysed for identification of the priorities for micro-ecologic and economic development in the region. The research work provides a strategic framework for sustainable development of agriculture in Jhabua district in particular in grass-root approach to regional development and provides a model framework for the tribal areas in India in general.Agricultural sustainability, agricultural ecosystem, eco-regional modelling

Pattern diversities in cropping systems in tribal regions: a case study of Jhabua tribal district in Madhya Pradesh, India

Agricultural development has been analysed by studying the cropping pattern and cropping diversification and crop specialization in any agro-ecosystem in regional and temporal framework. Tribal regions are experiencing agricultural intensification through diversification of cropping systems and crop specialization as a result of ecological economic changes as well as impact of public policy of technology transfer and resource use intensification. The market forces also are influencing the crop intensification as a result of exogenous market demand. In this paper, an attempt is made to analyze the pattern of cropping system in inter regional framework and identify how these patterns have changed over a period of time in Jhabua tribal district of Madhya Pradesh. Such an analysis will help in taking policy decisions for diversification and specialization of crop production in the changing cropping systems in regional framework with the objectives of achieving higher level of regional food production, maximisation of production and income to the farmers through promotion of cash crops etc. The analysis of the pattern diversity in regional framework would indicate to the eco-regional and exogenous impacts of market and public policies following the law of entropy.Cropping pattern, diversification, tribal regions

Pattern Identification of Land use and Resource use efficiencies in Agriculture in Jhabua Tribal district in Madhya Pradesh

In the fifties and sixties of 20th century, the regional economists identified a regional process of circular and cumulative causation of under- development of resource-rich but backward regions (Myrdal) and core-periphery relation of developed industrial regions with resource hinterland regions (Friedman). In the seventies, environment and development conflicts were identified leading to ecological and socio-economic degradation in the resource regions. In the regional framework, the tribal regions as sub-national regions have come under serious anthropogenic impacts due to increasing demands for resource materials for trade and industries. Growing awareness of environmental degradation and depletion, the policy makers, planners, environmentalist and economists have focused their attention to examine the efficiencies of land use and the resource use in agriculture, identifying the ecological and economic efficiencies of the resource use pattern. Agriculture, being an organic economic activity, has a close relation with the natural resources like land and water. The tribal ecology is changing and the tribes have gradually adapted to agriculture activities and a distinct agro-ecosystem has grown in tribal areas. The tribes are trying to diversify the resource use for their ecological and economic sustenance. The government is also influencing resource use and land use as development strategy in the tribal region. It is necessary to examine the land use and the resource use efficiencies in the agricultural areas in regional and temporal framework. Land use and resource use efficiencies have been measured to evaluate ecologic and economic efficiency and growth in agriculture. Since, agriculture operates in system dynamic framework in which agriculture has close relation with other uses like forestry in ecological landscape in eco-regional framework and is affected by climatic change and other anthropogenic impacts resulting from industrialization and urbanization. it is necessary to identify the land use and resource use efficiencies in agriculture in the tribal eco-system. Along with land, other natural resources like water are important in agriculture. The efficiency of irrigation may be an indicator to identify the use of water resource and its efficiency in agriculture. The land use and irrigation intensity are used as an indicators for measuring land use and resource use efficiency in this study. In this paper, the land use intensity has been measured by (1) Analysis of the land use extension in agriculture in different tahsils of Jhabua district to identify the level of resource use in different regions. (2) The land use and irrigation intensity has been used as measure of resource use intensity and efficiency in different tahsils in study area (3) The agricultural land use efficiency has been measured using standard coefficient, which is a modified Kendall’s Ranking Coefficient method for agricultural land use zoning based on land use efficienciesPattern identification, land use and resource use efficiency, Kendall's Ranking coefficient

Agricultural development and regional carrying capacity measurement of agro-ecosystem in Jhabua tribal district in Madhya Pradesh

The agro-ecosystem is a system composed of population, natural resources and economic activities related in a dynamic interaction in terms of socio-ecological and socio-economic relations conditioned by endogenous and exogenous factors. With time, the agro-ecosystem undergoes changes. By analysing the agro-ecosystem dynamics over a period of time, we can plan the agro-ecosystem for higher level of production and productivity, achieving higher level of resource use and environmental efficiency and maximise food security as well as livelihood security. Due to the control of forest area by the government, the tribes are largely depending on agriculture. Jhabua district is tribal dominated with almost 86.84 percent tribal population of approximately 14 lakhs by 2001 Census. The geographical area of the district is 6793 sq. km. The net cultivated area is in the district is 64 percent to the total geographical area. The Jhabua district is located in the western part of Madhya Pradesh on the spur of the Vindhyas and along the western boundry of the Malwa plateau. It adjoins by Banswara district of Rajasthan in Northwest, by Panchmahal and Barodra district of Gujrat in the west, Dhulia district of Maharastra and West Nimar district of Madhya Pradesh in south, Dhar district in the east and Rutlam in the west. The Carrying capacity of agricultural ecosystem may be measured by taking production, productivity and socio-ecologic criteria. Food security, production and food availability and population and employment are used as indicators for measuring the carrying capacity of any agro-ecosystem. The carrying capacity measurement is important to check the capacity of the agro-ecosystem to support the population, the productivity changes of the ecosystem and food availability and other measures. In this paper, an attempt is made to analyse the adaptation of tribal population to agriculture and changes taking place in the agro-ecosystem and its productivity. It is necessary to identify population change, its density and spread, changes taking place in habitat in terms of land use changes and population and agro-ecosystem linkages in terms of landholding, population carrying capacity, food security, employment condition etc. Such an analysis would help to undertake agricultural development food security and employment security in the tribal regions with the objectives of eco-restoration, conservation and development.Population carrying capacity, ecosystem productivity, food security

Estimation of extracellular lipase enzyme produced by thermophilic bacillus sp. isolated from arid and semi-arid region of Rajasthan, India

Thermophilic organisms can be defined as microorganisms which are adapted to live at high temperatures. The enzymes produce by thermophilic bacteria are capable of catalyzing biochemical reactions at high temperatures. Thermophilic bacteria are able to produce thermostable lipase enzymes capable of degradation of lipid at temperatures higher than those of mesophilic bacteria. Therefore, the isolation of thermophilic bacteria from natural sources and their identification are quite useful in terms of discovering thermophilic lipase enzymes. Due to great temperature fluctuation in hot arid and semi-arid regions of Rajasthan, this area could serve as a good source for new thermophilic lipase producing bacteria with novel industrially important properties. The main objective of this research is the isolation and estimation of industrially important thermophilic lipase enzyme produced by thermophilic bacteria, isolated from arid and semi-arid region of Rajasthan. For this research purpose, soil samples were collected from Churu, Sikar and Jhunjunu regions of Rajasthan. A total of 16 bacterial strains were isolated, and among these bacterial isolates only two thermophilic lipase producing bacteria were identified. The thermophilic lipase enzyme was estimated by qualitative and quantitative experiments. The isolate was identified as Bacillus sp. by microscopic, biochemical and molecular characterization. The optimum enzyme activity was observed at pH 8, temperature 60°C and 5% salt concentration at 24 hrs time duration. Lipases are useful in a variety of biotechnological fields such as food and dairy (cheese ripening, flavour development), detergent, pharmaceutical (naproxen, ibuprofen), agrochemical (insecticide, pesticide) and oleochemical (fat and oil hydrolysis, biosurfactant synthesis) industries. Lipases can be further used in many newer areas where they can serve as potential biocatalysts. 
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