The Model Training Course entitled “Livelihood improvement of farm families through Integrated Farming System” was organized at ICAR-CIWA, Bhubaneswar during 17th to 24th November, 2015. The course was sponsored by the Directorate of Extension, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Govt. of India, New Delhi. The training programme was conducted with the objectives; to provide advance training to the state agricultural officers and scientists of ICAR/SAUs/KVKs and improve their skills in the area of Integrated Farming System (IFS); to show the trainees live demonstrations/ experiments on IFS to improved resource-use efficiency, and to provide an opportunity to discuss and exchange ideas/ knowledge sharing between the academics and with the experts/resource persons who have made notable contributions in this area.

Integrated Farming System (IFS) is a multi-disciplinary whole-farm approach for solving the problems of small and marginal farmers. This approach aims at increasing income and employment from small-holdings by integrating various farm enterprises and recycling crop residues and by-products within the farm itself. Under the gradual shrinking of land holding, it is required to integrate the land-based enterprises like fishery, poultry, duck rearing, apiary, field and horticultural crops, protected cultivation, mushroom cultivation, dairy etc. within the bio-physical and socio-economic environment of the farmers to make farming more profitable and dependable. Keeping this in view, the course contents were plannned accordingly, to share knowledge on the latest development in gender mainstreaming in IFS and sensitize the extension functionaries of state departments and scientists of KVKs.

Seventeen officials from State Departments and Scientists from ICAR Institutes in the areas of Agricultural Sciences from eight States viz., Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Telengana, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, West Bengal, Karnataka and Odisha participated in the programme.  The course was organized by Dr. Naresh Babu, Principal Scientist & Course Director, Dr. Jyoti Nayak and Dr. J. Charles Jeeva, Senior Scientists & Course Coordinators, and the Technical Assistants, Sh. Sanjay Kr. Behera, Smt. Tapaswini Sahoo, Er. Pragati Kishore Rout and Er. Subrat Kr. Das. Certificate of Participation was distributed to the participants by Dr. S.K. Srivastava, Director, ICAR-CIWA, Bhubaneswar.