Potentials of Jute in Sustainable Family Farming for Livelihood Security in India

This is a chapter authored by Dr Dilip Kumar Kundu for the book Family Farming: Challenges and Opportunities (eds. B. Mandal et al.). Dr Kundu is assosiated with the Head of the Division of Crop Production, ICAR-Central Research Institute for Jute & Allied Fibres and has done extensive research on jute and allied fibres. In this chapter titled "Potentials of Jute in Sustainable Family Farming for Livelihood Security in India and Recent Developments in Jute Production Technologies", Dr Kundu discusses about newer scientific technologies that are developed for sustainable farming of jute and other allied fibres, such as jute varieties with finer fibre quality that can fit multiple cropping system; newer manually operated small farm machines, technologies for successfully growing jute under deficit and excess rainfall conditions, for retting jute with low volume of water, and improved retting of jute in stagnant water using talc based microbial formulation. He states that the adoption of these technologies has increased the yield and quality of jute fibre, reduced cost of cultivation and thereby increased income of the family farms in eastern India.