Knowledge and awareness of conservation agriculture among the farmers of Mewat District of Haryana

Conservation agriculture offers a powerful option for meeting future food demands while also contributing to sustainable agriculture and rural development. CA methods can improve the efficiency of input, increase farm income, improve or sustain crop yields, and protect and revitalize soil, biodiversity and the natural resource base. Still there exists a wide gap between the technology available at the research level and its knowledge at farmer’s level. Keeping this in view, an attempt has been made to know about the awareness and knowledge level of the farmers of Mewat District of Haryana state. The study has been conducted in the three clusters comprising of 17 villages of 5 blocks of the Mewat District. It is found that most of the farmers are not aware about the practice of zero tillage only 13, 10 and 6.5 % of the farmers in cluster 1, 2 and 3 respectively are aware of the practice of zero tillage and it is adopted only in one village. Retention of crops in the field is also not practiced because the crop residue is mostly used as fuel and fodder; if some alternate arrangement for fuel and fodder is made then residue retention is possible in that area.