Indigenous Practices of Soil and Water Conservation for Sustainable Hill Agriculture and Improving Livelihood Security

In the foothills of the North-West Himalayan region of India, agriculture is the main occupation of the residents. The soil and water resources are becoming the major constraints in agricultural production in the erosion-prone fragile ecosystem of the region. However, due to intensive rains and sloping lands of the region, erosion of the topsoil becoming the major problem for practicing sustainable agriculture in the region, which further dissects the lands, reduces the fertility potentials and land productivities of the region. The root cause of this huge erosion in the region is the intensive rains within a short interval of time on the bare sloping hillsides and handling this problem in both ways could reduce their erosion damage. Socio-economically the farmers are illiterate, poor, and hesitate to adopt innovative techniques of both land and water conservation. All this makes the challenge of reducing erosion losses quite difficult. Farmers in the region do have the skills to manage the problem of soil erosion which they learned from their forefathers and have faith in them. These technologies put together are termed as “Indigenous Technical Knowledge” (ITKs) and these ITKs have helped them a lot for sustainable agriculture in the region. Among different ITKs bunding of field, plowing before monsoon, filter strips, earthing-up in maize, mulching, compression of soil in sugarcane are the important ones for restoring the fertility of soils, reducing erosion losses, improving land productivity, and ultimately livelihoods in the region.