Farming Futures: Diversifying Lives

In India, agriculture plays a crucial role in agrarian economies, but small and marginal farmers are facing unsustainable land-based livelihoods. Their land no longer meets their families’ and cattle’ food and fodder needs. Diversification has been seen as a strategy to minimize risks caused by price fluctuations, uncertain weather, and pests. Traditionally, diversification involved growing multiple crops for subsistence farming and managing household food security. Keeping this in view, present study was thought to be carried out with selected characteristics of small and marginal farmers, livelihood security, extent of agricultural diversification, to develop and measure the attitude scale, relation between selected characteristics and attitude as well as agricultural diversification, constraints and suggestions offered by the small and marginal farmers.