Hill Agriculture and Sustainability  (English, Hardcover, Kumar N. P. Thankur, Manpreet Kour, Rayees Ahmad Shah, Parshotam)

Indian hilly regions are inhabited by 51 million people, covering 18 per cent of the geographical area and 6 per cent of Indian population. But hilly regions are facing crisis and are constantly struggling with their underdevelopment and under pressure from natural and human-induced stresses. However, potential of hills for economic growth, development of rural sector within the hill region, and their role in providing life sustaining water and environmental services, has started receiving attention of government and other voluntary agencies. Maintenance of agro-bidiversity, Adoption of rainfed farming with major rainfed cropping systems i.e maize-wheat, rice-wheat, and intercropped pulses and oilseeds in maize and wheat, while under irrigated conditions rice-wheat and vegetable based crop sequences can be adopted. Along with livestock rearing as an integral part of mountain communities as well as of nomadic tribes .For developing right approaches to hill areas development all possible interventions through technology, policy , institutional etc should be framed. Soil and moisture conservation technologies can be adopted by promoting water shed management , moisture conservation strategies, and water harvesting schemes . Also the integration of cropping components with different farming system components is able to generate more income and increased the profitability through recycling of wastes of one component into another. This also reduced the dependence on external inputs. Thus integration of horticulture components one of the most promising enterprise of hill agriculture with different farming system increased the net returns and can double the farmers income besides increased employment opportunities and generated enough scope to employ family labourers around the calendar year. However the labourer engaged in crop components also take care of dairy ,poultry ,apiary and mushroom cultivation reducing the cost of production with increased profitability.