The ICAR team in Muzaffarpur on Monday. Picture by Prakash Kumar

Muzaffarpur, Aug. 22: A team of experts has arrived in the district to inspect clusters that fall under World Bank’s programme for improving livelihood security in salt-affected watersheds of Muzaffarpur and Sheohar districts.

The members comprise officials from Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), New Delhi, and Rajendra Agriculture University (RAU), Pusa.

Led by A.K. Singh, the deputy director-general of natural resource management division, ICAR, the team members include director, research, RAU, Vijay Prasad Singh, V.B. Bhatt, an ICAR official for the eastern region and A.K. Singh, senior scientist at RAU, Pusa. ICAR is involved in improving productivity and profitability of rice, wheat- and sugarcane-based farming systems in salt-affected watersheds with the help of World Bank.

The ambitious plan for improving livelihood security, which was launched in 2009 for five years, aims to enhance employment opportunities through allied agriculture activities and post-harvest technology, boost skills of farmers for livelihood security through entrepreneurship development and knowledge empowerment.

Deputy director-general of ICAR’s natural resource management division A.K. Singh visited Motipur block in Muzaffarpur on Sunday to assess the ongoing schemes of livelihood security.

He told The Telegraph four big clusters, including Motipur and Kanti in Muzaffarpur and Sheohar town and Piprahi in Sheohar, were at present involved in innovative research under the programme.

Around 75 acres of salt-affected land that are barren or give poor yield are reclaimed in every cluster for which green manure is used based on the soil’s value.

Around 2,156 families with 1,029 hectares among them witnessed better rice yield in the reclaimed soil and also recorded 42-74 per cent increase in grain yield. Income from the rice crop increased by Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000 per hectare, said the experts.

Increasing the bund (embankment) height of the salt-affected fields by 6-10cm helps in rainwater conservation, said the experts, adding that 472.5 acres have been taken under the scheme’s best management practices for enhancing the productivity of rice and wheat.

The farmers in these clusters have also been trained in innovative and scientific method of farming. Teams from RAU have demonstrated to the farmers in each cluster resource conservation technology for wheat and the profits in terms of energy, labour, time and expenditure.

The experts said the farmers have been imparted skills for producing improved and high-yield production of vegetables like tomato and cucumber and poly tunnels are used for early production that allow income of more than Rs 9,500 per hectare per season.

Farmers have also adopted fishing in the abandoned ponds after minor reshaping and at least 40 landless farmers have been encouraged to take up goat and poultry farming to generate extra income from milk, meat and egg production.