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Abstract
It is important to develop valid field tools that can identify homogeneous farming situations that
facilitates offering of appropriate agricultural technology to farmers. The present study was conducted to
test the validity of such a novel participatory field tool that can identify micro farming situation with
special reference to rainfed rice cultivation in selected village of North 24 Parganas District of West
Bengal, India. A Micro farming situation was conceptualised as a sub-system of a relatively large farming
situation, which is relatively homogeneous in nature. Farmers of the village themselves classified their
agricultural fields into distinct micro-farming situations through participatory mapping exercise. All the
70 farmers growing rainfed rice in that uninterrupted field were then interviewed for recording their
rainfed rice cultivation practices. Most of the rainfed rice cultivation practices like variety selection, time
of sowing, transplanting and harvesting, seed rate, seedling age, spacing, plant protection practices,
fertilizer management and yield differed significantly among these identified micro-farming situations.
This indicated the effectiveness of farmers’ classification. However, more empirical evidence is needed –
especially for different field crops – to establish the validity of this tool. The tool can help to offer
appropriate technologies to the farmers for a technically precise and environmentally sound agriculture.