By using the appropriate skills and procedures, modern farmers reduce expenses while maximizing agricultural productivity and profitability. One of the best strategies to increase harvest and earnings is to combine crop cultivation and livestock breeding.

Raising fish alongside chickens or other animals is one example of integrated farming. The animal’s excrement can be used as manure for aquatic vegetation that fish eat or as fish food. While cattle eats pond weeds, poultry eats weeds, insects, snails, and frogs in the pond.

Along with fruits and vegetables, snails can also be raised. Snails consume banana leaves, pawpaw, okra, cabbage, lettuce, eggplant, and other plants. Therefore, if you frequently grow these crops, consider setting up a snail farm. An integrated farming system (IFS) combines plant and animal production utilizing both contemporary methods and technologies and age-old techniques. The main goal is to produce more organic food of higher quality and quantity while concurrently producing organic manure and renewable biogas electricity.

Farmers put in a lot of effort around the world to make a living. However, not all farmers, particularly small family farms, have a consistent income. After they have paid for all of their inputs, there is very little left (seeds, livestock breeds, fertilizers, pesticides, energy, feed, labor, etc.). integrated farming systems’ rise (IFS)

As integrated farming systems (IFS) have grown in popularity, farmers have been able to create a framework for an alternative development model that will increase the likelihood that small-scale farming operations would be successful.

The phrase “integrated farming system” is frequently used to describe a farming method that is more comprehensive than monoculture methods. It can also be referred to as integrated biosystems and refers to agricultural systems that integrate fish and cattle or livestock and grain production.

System Cycle for Integrated Crop-Livestock Farming

A system that combines the raising of crops, livestock, poultry, fish, tree crops, plantation crops, and other crops is known as an integrated crop-livestock farming system.

How Does Integrated Farming Work?

Utilizing a network of interconnected businesses, this system allows “waste” from one component to be used as an input for another. Costs are decreased, and output and/or revenue are increased. Farmers achieve an overall gain in production for the entire farming system by using trash as a resource, which not only reduces waste emissions but also does so. As part of integrated farming, different species of plants, animals, birds, fish, and other aquatic flora and fauna are used to produce crops, following a principle that is similar to that of nature.

The basic principle is to enhance the ecological biodiversity:

• By utilizing the right cropping techniques, such as mixed cropping, crop rotation, crop combination, and intercropping, to reduce competition for natural resources like water, food, and space, as well as by implementing eco-friendly measures
• By employing a multi-story layout that maximizes the utilization of all available space and fosters strong interactions between biotic and abiotic elements.
• By combining subsystems that enable favorable interactions between the various parts, increasing agricultural productivity overall.
• The integrated farming system, which emphasizes intensifying agricultural productivity through increased diversification, resource integration, and building of market links, is also a sustainable agriculture system. In resource-poor areas of Asia and Africa, thousands of tiny and marginal family farmers have switched to this type of farming.

The Benefits of Integrated Farming

The implementation of integrated farming has been made possible in recent years by advances in agricultural research and technology.

This has increased productivity per acre while also maximizing land use to guarantee the sustainability of food production and meet the rising demands brought on by an increase in the world’s population. Our food and ecosystems have been contaminated in the past as a result of the indiscriminate and irregular application of chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

What are the types of integrated farming?

Integrated farming is demonstrated by: cultivation of pigs and fish together cultivation of ducks and fish together. chicken farming and fishing combined farming cattle and fish together. husbandry of rabbits mixed with fish. chicken keeping and millet, sorghum, or maize cultivation. Beans, peas, and maize are interplanted with groundnuts. Intercropping coconut trees with bananas, squash, ginger, or eggplant. producing biogas or livestock waste for residential or agricultural usage.

What Are the Advantages of Integrated Farming?

The advantages of using an integrated farming system are:

1. The integrated farming system method changes farming practices to guarantee maximum crop output and efficient resource utilization.
2. The integrated system recycles farm waste for industrial uses.
3. A wise combination of agricultural businesses, such as dairy, poultry, piggery, fisheries, and sericulture, tailored to the local agroclimate and the socioeconomic standing of the farmers, can boost the viability of farming operations.
4. Throughout the world, many farmers and even entire nations are adopting the integrated farming system, which uses techniques that take into account both current and future climatic conditions, soil characteristics, population eating habits, and estimates the future food requirements of the constantly expanding human and animal population.
5. The improved farming technologies used in the new integrated practices include integrated nutrient management, site-specific nutrient management, conservation technology, the use of bio-fertilizers, crop rotation, zero tillage, and the use of farm management systems like AGRIVI, which aid farmers in tracking their field activities as well as the productivity and profitability of their entire operation.
6. By giving farmers access to a knowledge base of best practice procedures in the form of necessary activities that enable them to plan the season in advance, AGRIVI also assists farmers with integrated farming.
7. The issues of food security and climate mitigation should unquestionably be resolved by the use of an integrated farming system and contemporary farming techniques.

Disadvantages of integrated farming system

The limitations of integrated farming shouldn’t deter you because the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Consider all the ways in which this form of farming benefits you and the neighborhood as well as ways to get over any drawbacks.

The following are some drawbacks of the integrated agricultural system:

1. 1. Some farming tasks require the use of expensive contemporary technology. For instance, if one wants to produce biogas or raise snails, they must invest in new information, tools, and equipment. There aren’t many professionals in Nigeria who can advise farmers on innovative farming methods including beekeeping, snail farming, and record keeping. Therefore, the majority of farmers employ trial-and-error techniques.
2. Not all plants, animals, or poultry can be combined. For example, because they are toxic, you cannot produce some plants to be used as feed for particular animals, poultry, or fish.
3. A farm with pigs, fish, and birds can spread illnesses like influenza. Some of these illnesses are contagious to people, and some of them are fatal and incurable due to virus mutilation. Beekeeping can be dangerous for people, animals, and birds.
4. If the bees are harmful, a farmer is urged to keep harmless bee species and to keep cattle and poultry away from beehives.
5. 1. Some farming tasks require the use of expensive contemporary technology. For instance, if one wants to produce biogas or raise snails, they must invest in new information, tools, and equipment. There aren’t many professionals in Nigeria who can advise farmers on innovative farming methods including beekeeping, snail farming, and record keeping. Therefore, the majority of farmers employ trial-and-error techniques.
6. Not all plants, animals, or poultry can be combined. For example, because they are toxic, you cannot produce some plants to be used as feed for particular animals, poultry, or fish.
7. A farm with pigs, fish, and birds can spread illnesses like influenza. Some of these illnesses are contagious to people, and some of them are fatal and incurable due to virus mutilation. Beekeeping can be dangerous for people, animals, and birds.
8. If the bees are harmful, a farmer is urged to keep harmless bee species and to keep cattle and poultry away from beehives.

CONCLUSION

You may make effective plans before implementing an integrated agricultural system by being aware of its benefits and drawbacks. If one knows what they are doing, it is a very lucrative industry.

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