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Abstract
The management of agricultural land to improve farm income in coastal saline areas is quite challenging
because, firstly, most of the agricultural area is characterised by monocropping with low-yielding rice
varieties during kharif season. Under such fragile environment sustaining the livelihoods of these resource
poor farmers become a real challenge both for technology developers as well as policy makers. To
increase the farm income under the coastal saline environment, strategies have been taken up to increase
the adoption of the salt resistant crop varieties and more importantly harvesting, storing and appropriate
management through different kinds of land shaping technologies. The study pertains to primary survey
on farm households, in South and North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal. The sample farmers were
drawn from two blocks, six villages and total sample size of 180 farm households of which half were the
beneficiary farmers and the rest was non-beneficiary farmers. In the coastal area the land shaping
technique, particularly farm pond and paddy-cum fish models, are unique technology for addressing the
key challenges like land degradation (salinity), drainage congestion and scarcity of fresh water for
irrigation and in turn have the potential to enhancing production, productivity, income and employment.
These techniques particularly farm pond and paddy-cum-fish are a financially viable and attractive
proposition for the coastal region. However for larger adoption of these technologies need to address some
key issues like socio-economic constraints, some of which can be addressed by research level (e.g. land
configuration, soil quality) some other at policy level (e.g. financial incentives).