Analysing the farming system diversity of farmers following integrated farming system in Cooch Behar district of West Bengal

The important reason behind conducting this research in this particular area is, West Bengal is known for its small land holding size of the farmers especially Cooch Behar district. So it is very much important for them to increase their income from the small land holdings. Analyzing the diversity of their farms will help them increase the income levels. The present study was taken place in Cooch Behar-I, Cooch Behar-II & Dinhata-II blocks of Cooch Behar district and 175 farmers following IFS were selected using multi stage random cum purposive method. Data were collected through personal interviews using a well-structured interview schedule specifically designed for the research objectives. In this study, the level of the farming system diversity was considered as one of the dependent variable, while twenty-one independent variables were selected to examine their relationship with the dependent variable. The findings revealed that the majority of the farmers (44.00%) belonged to the medium level category of farming system diversity, followed by 36.57 per cent in the high level category and 19.43 per cent in the low level category. Further analysis indicated that several independent variables, namely family education, annual family income, annual family expenditure, landholding, irrigation status, animal possession, material possession, credit seeking behaviour, information seeking behaviour, scientific orientation, economic orientation and management efficiency showed positive and significant relationship and the variables age showed negative and significant relationship with the farming system diversity.