Inter-cropping with sugarcane always brings more profit to farmers

Inter-cropping with sugarcane has been found as more beneficial to the farmers as it can boost total crop production per unit area coupled with ensuring sustainable sugarcane cultivation with higher economic benefit compared to other crops.
Systematic inter-cropping- potato, onion, lentil, mug bean, garlic and some other winter crops, vegetables and spice help increases sugarcane yield compared to sole-cropping.Quoting the field-level research findings and farmers views the sugarcane researchers and agriculturists said here Wednesday.Dr Khalilur Rahman, Chief Scientific Officer of Bangladesh Sugarcane Research Institute (BSRI) at Ishwardi, revealed that inter-cropping not only increase total crop production but also help improve soil health and fertility with little or no negative effect on sugarcane yield and quality.Terming the sugarcane as a cum-cash-cum-industrial crop of Bangladesh, he said its farming is being gradually pushed into low-lying marginal lands due to high demand of cereals and vegetable crops. Besides, the national average yield is far below than potential yield.Although a good number of high yielding modern varieties and production technologies have been developed at the BSRI but these modern varieties and production technologies failed to increase national average yield to a satisfactory level.He attributed that the existing sugarcane cultivation would not be economically viable without inter-cropping which always reduce the demand for extra land to produce the above crops as well as save foreign currency. So, it must be mandatory for the sugarcane farmers.Furthermore, inter-cropping create additional job opportunity needed for intensive crop production. He underscored the need for wide-range expansion of sugarcane inter-cropping through reactivating the field level agricultural officials and staff for the nation’s food security.Principal Scientific Officer Dr Samajit Pal said the BSRI has, so far, developed more than thirty production packages of different winter crops suitable as inter-crop with sugarcane but the technologies could not be expanded to the farmers’ level due to lack of proper initiatives. To overcome the problems, BSRI developed a series of high yielding varieties of sugarcane and production technologies especially inter-cropping packages for sustainable production under particular agro-ecological and socio-economic conditions for the poor farmers. Multiple cropping, in general, refers to planting two or more crops in the same field in a same year. It involves intensive crop cultivation in terms of effective use of space and time. It plays an important role in promoting the development of agriculture in many countries of the world especially in densely populated developing countries with scare land reserves. In many cases, it gives higher total production, monetary returns and greater resource use efficiently and increases land productivity by almost 60 per cent. It often gives higher cash return and increases total production per unit area and time than mono-cropping. Inter-cropping also increases nutritional quality of diet for the farm family allowing better control of weeds and increasing land equivalent ratio as much as 78 per cent and reduces soil erosion. Strengthening inter-cropping programme following appropriate production packages might help obtain a considerable amount of pulses, vegetables, oil seeds, spices and other crops suitable as inter-crop with sugarcane. No adverse effect of inter-cropping vegetables on sugarcane yield was found even in some cases sugarcane yield was found higher than inter-cropped condition in single row but it was almost identical in paired row system. Yields of inter-crops were higher in paired row. It was counted that large scale inter-cropping different vegetables with sugarcane in paired row could be played a vital role in increasing national production of those crops without involving any extra land. Besides, the inter-cropping with sugarcane should become widely popular among the sugarcane farm families, which will ensure positive impact on food securities to farmers as well as the nation, Dr Pal added. -BSS, Rajshahi