Integrated Paddy, Fish and Finger Millets Cultivation by Apatani Tribes in the Eastern Himalayan Region- Arunachal Pradesh

Abstract

A system of integrated Paddy fish and finger millets (IPFFM) farming along with practices of Agriculture ritual by worshiping the Mother Earth, Rain and Sky to shower blessing upon standing crops and vegetable in Agriculture field, with colorful celebration wearing tradition attire and sacrificing livestock to please the God of agriculture for bumper harvest is a unique feature practiced by Apatani agrian. The farmers enjoy fish production, two harvests a year without providing any supplementary feed to fish stocked in the paddy-fields along with harvest of finger millets and paddy as a primary agriculture produce, thus protein from fish and carbohydrate from rice and millets thereby providing nutritionally balance agriculture produce from same plot, generation after generation, maintaining the production and productivity of three components at constant level, under bio fertilizer from livestock-poultry dropping and waste byproducts recycle of agriculture and horticulture produce, without use of chemical fertilizer. The present integrated Paddy fish finger millets (IPFFM) farming practices followed by Apatani farmers are ecofriendly, without much manipulations of natural environment which may led to climate change in the era of global climate disruption. So IPFFM farming can be consider as remunerative and sustainable integrated farming model for replication in similar climatic and topographical geographical location of other parts of India and world.