Integrated Farming System: Objectives, Components & Advantages
Gajendra Singh Godara
Oct 8, 2025
12
mins read
An Integrated Farming System (IFS) combines compatible enterprises such as crops, livestock, poultry, aquaculture, and forestry-on a single farm to create a self-sustaining cycle. Animal dung is composted into fertilizer for fields, while crop residues feed livestock. Fish pond water can irrigate crops, and forestry by-products supply raw materials for animal shelters. This closed-loop model maximizes resource use, reduces waste, and cuts input costs. Modern IFS also incorporates biochar, which enhances soil fertility, retains moisture, and sequesters carbon long term. By mimicking natural ecosystems, an Integrated Farming System boosts productivity, improves environmental health, and supports resilient, diversified farm incomes.
IFS aims to achieve multiple goals simultaneously:
Food & Nutrition Security: Provides a steady supply of cereals, pulses, vegetables, fruits, milk and eggs for household and local markets.
Income & Employment: Generates multiple income streams (crops, dairy, poultry, fish, etc.), stabilising farmers’ earnings and providing year-round work.
Resource Optimisation: Recycles waste (manure, crop residues) into inputs, reducing the need for chemical fertilisers and feed.
Environmental Sustainability: Promotes soil health, water conservation and biodiversity through crop rotation, agroforestry and organic practices.
Key components include various farm enterprises on a single landholding:
Crops & Horticulture: Cereals (rice, wheat, millets), pulses, vegetables and fruits. Diverse cropping patterns (intercropping, crop rotation) maintain soil fertility.
Livestock: Dairy cattle, buffaloes or goats provide milk, meat and manure. Proper manure management enriches fields with organic matter.
Poultry: Chickens, ducks and other birds produce eggs and meat and help with pest control.
Fisheries/Aquaculture: Fish ponds or integration in paddy fields provide protein and additional income.
Agroforestry: Trees (fruit, fodder or timber) grown alongside fields improve soil health and microclimate.
Waste Management: Vermicompost and biogas units turn animal dung and crop residues into energy and organic fertiliser, closing the resource loop.
Models vary by region to suit local ecology:
Rainfed/Arid Areas: A typical model sees Rajasthan farmers growing drought-tolerant millets and legumes under neem trees, while raising goats and poultry. Goat manure enriches the soil, the crops provide animal fodder, and the integration maximizes resilience and resource recycling.
Irrigated Plains: Common mixes include rice–wheat with dairy animals and fish ponds. Poultry roam the fields to eat pests, while livestock supply manure.
Coastal/Delta Zones: Integrations like rice–shrimp or shrimp–paddy systems with ducks/poultry. Salt-tolerant trees and crops buffer against tidal effects.
Promoted IFS Models: ICAR suggests prototypes (e.g. “horticulture + piggery + fisheries + plantation” or “crops + poultry + fish + mushroom”) for specific agro-climatic zones.
Economic Stability: Diversification through integrated farming provides multiple income sources, reducing the risk of total crop failure. For example, a farmer cultivating crops alongside livestock has steady income even if one enterprise suffers.
Nutritional Security: The system offers a variety of foods—grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, eggs, and fish—improving diet quality for farm families and contributing to overall health.
Efficient Resources: By recycling farm by-products like manure and crop residues, integrated farming cuts input costs. For instance, animal waste is used as natural fertilizer, reducing dependence on chemical inputs.
Climate Resilience: Multiple enterprises and cover crops create buffers against extreme weather events. Government studies show that IFS reduces climate risk, especially in rainfed regions.
Employment: Integrated farms provide year-round work involving cultivation, animal care, and harvesting, thus enhancing rural livelihoods and reducing seasonal unemployment.
Sustainability: Conventional farming often uses monocropping and high chemical inputs, while IFS emphasises recycling and diversity.
Profitability: A specialised farm may earn more in good years, but IFS yields steadier aggregate income across enterprises.
Risk: Mono-crops are vulnerable to pests and weather; IFS spreads risk across crops and livestock.
Resource Use: Conventional relies on purchased fertilisers/feeds. IFS reuses manure and residues to reduce external inputs.
Environment: Integrated systems produce less waste and more on-farm biodiversity than intensive monocultures.
Awareness/Training: Many farmers lack knowledge of integrated techniques; extension services need to demonstrate IFS models.
Capital Requirements: Setting up ponds, animal sheds or biogas units requires investment beyond the means of many small farmers.
Market Access: Selling a variety of products (fish, fruits, milk) requires access to diverse markets, which can be limited in rural areas.
Policy and Credit: Lack of dedicated subsidies or insurance for integrated farms can deter adoption. Limited MSP coverage for niche crops or products is a barrier.
Management Complexity: Running a multi-enterprise farm is labor-intensive and requires varied skills. Farmers may need cooperative models or institutional support to manage complexity.
Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY): Launched in 2007, RKVY provides flexible funding to states for boosting agricultural growth, including the adoption of integrated farming systems. The scheme promotes demonstration and establishment of integrated models tailored to local needs.
Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN): Provides direct income support of ₹6,000 annually to small and marginal farmers. Its goal is to ensure financial stability, reduce dependence on credit, and promote investment in agriculture. Beneficiaries include landholding farmers meeting eligibility norms, verified through land records. Key challenges involve beneficiary exclusion, land ownership disputes, data errors, and ensuring timely, transparent fund transfers across states.
Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY): Introduced in 2015, PMKSY aims to enhance irrigation coverage and improve water use efficiency. Integrated agriculture farming is encouraged under its “per drop more crop” component to maximize resource utilization and conserve water across diverse farming enterprises.
National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA): The NMSA advances climate-smart and sustainable agricultural practices, with a focus on integrated farming techniques. It seeks to improve soil health, increase water efficiency, and boost productivity by supporting crop–livestock–horticulture–fishery combinations, particularly in rainfed zones.
National Livestock Mission (NLM): Started in 2014, this mission targets the sustainable growth of the livestock sector. By promoting the integration of dairy, poultry, piggery, and small ruminants within farming systems, NLM enables farmers to diversify income and build resilience.
Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs): KVKs function as agricultural knowledge and training centers, under ICAR, and play a key role in extension. They run practical demonstrations and impart training on integrated farming practices such as agroforestry, crop–livestock, and agro-aquaculture, helping farmers adopt holistic strategies for better productivity and sustainability.
Strengthen Policy Support:
Enhance targeted subsidies, credit, and insurance access for integrated farming projects under schemes like NMSA and RKVY to incentivize adoption among smallholders.
Promote Focused Research & Innovation:
Invest in R&D for region-specific integrated models, resilient crop and livestock varieties, efficient water/pest management, and new integration approaches (e.g., crop–aquaculture).Expand Extension & Training:
Scale up KVK, agri-university, and village-level programmes for practical training, on-field demonstrations, and farmer capacity-building in IFS best practices.Foster Public–Private Partnerships:
Encourage collaborations with agribusiness and private players to bring in expertise, market links, finance, and value-chain development (processing, marketing integrated produce).Improve Market Linkages & Infrastructure:
Develop value chains and rural market facilities for diversified output—e-NAM, new rural mandis, cold storage, agro-processing, and direct-to-consumer models for integrated outputs.Integrate ICT and Advisory Services:
Leverage ICT platforms to provide farmers with real-time weather data, advisory services, market information, and access to e-commerce for IFS products.
By implementing these steps together, integrated farming in India can become more resilient, profitable, and accessible—helping achieve food security, rural employment, and sustainable agriculture goals.
UPSC Previous Year Questions
Q. How is permaculture farming different from conventional chemical farming? (2021)
Permaculture farming discourages monocultural practices but in conventional chemical farming, monoculture practices are predominant.
Conventional chemical farming can cause an increase in soil salinity but the occurrence of such phenomenon is not observed in permaculture farming.
Conventional chemical farming is easily possible in semi-arid regions but permaculture farming is not so easily possible in such regions.
Practice of mulching is very important in permaculture farming but not necessarily so in conventional chemical farming.
Select the correct answer using the code given below.
(a) 1 and 3
(b) 1, 2 and 4
(c) 4 only
(d) 2 and 3
Answer: (b)
Q. With reference to the circumstances in Indian agriculture, the concept of “Conservation Agriculture” assumes significance. Which of the following fall under the Conservation Agriculture? (2018)
Avoiding monoculture practices
Adopting minimum tillage
Avoiding the cultivation of plantation crops
Using crop residues to cover soil surface
Adopting spatial and temporal crop sequencing/crop rotations
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
(a) 1, 3 and 4
(b) 2, 3, 4 and 5
(c) 2, 4 and 5
(d) 1, 2, 3 and 5
Answer: (c)
Frequently Asked Questions(FAQs)
Q. What is an integrated farming system?
A. An integrated farming system (IFS) combines multiple farm activities (such as crops, livestock, fishery and forestry) on one farm so that outputs or waste from one enterprise support the others.
Q. What are the objectives of an integrated farming system?
A. The objectives include maximizing farm productivity and income through resource optimisation. IFS aims for food/nutrition security, diversified income streams, efficient input use and environmental sustainability.
Q. What are the components of IFS?
A. Key components are crop production (cereals, pulses, vegetables), horticulture (fruits, flowers), livestock rearing (dairy animals), poultry (chickens/ducks), aquaculture (fish ponds), agroforestry (trees) and waste recycling units (vermicompost, biogas).
Q. What are the advantages of an integrated farming system?
A. IFS provides stable and increased income, year-round employment, diverse nutritious produce, reduced input costs (through waste reuse), and stronger resilience to climate variability.
Q. How is the integrated farming system relevant for UPSC?
A. IFS is relevant for GS-3 (Agriculture, Environment) as a model of sustainable agriculture. It connects to schemes (NMSA, RAD) and policy goals (doubling farmers’ income). UPSC exams have directly featured IFS (e.g. Prelims 2022).
Conclusion
Integrated farming provides a future-ready path for agriculture that is productive, sustainable and climate-resilient. By intelligently combining crops, livestock, aquaculture and trees, it enhances food security, income and resource efficiency. For UPSC preparation, understanding IFS helps aspirants address questions on sustainable farming and farmer welfare. Embracing IFS can support India’s goals of agricultural growth, rural livelihood security and environmental conservation.
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