Advisor, Shree Vivekanand Research and Training Institute (VRTI), Mandvi, Kutch 370 465, Gujarat, India.

Barring wheat and rice, Indian productivity of many crops including cotton is very low. This is in spite of strong efforts being made from time to time to improve crop yields for transferring research-improved crop production technologies to farmers’ fields. The productivity of cotton is hovering around 300 kg/ha for the past one decade without much being achieved so far with the Technology Mission on Cotton being implemented beginning 2000.

Planners, scientists, economists and others are often being criticized for making big projections and failing to achieve their targets. Why are they failing? Are they so casual? Are their assumptions, methodologies and techniques of planning and implementation not proper? Certainly there is something wrong and we need to change our thinking and approach so that we make some substantial achievement on crop productivity when we have so much of research and development experiences in agriculture and also in allied sectors including information technology.

I feel, we have always made compartmentalized efforts even at the level of transfer of technology, that is, plant breeders leading the seed technology, plant protectionists leading the integrated pest management (IPM), agronomists and physiologists leading the integrated nutrient management (INM), and agriculture engineers leading the land and water management (LWM) with each group often not giving much consideration to the efforts of others. The extension workers and farmers appear confused with too much information coming from all directions including inputs from private sector that try to market their products.

The best option for improving crop productivity is Integrated Crop Management (ICM) which is a holistic approach to address almost all problems effectively and economically that we

Face at administrative and operational levels. ICM has been tried successfully by some NGOs and private sectors in their extension initiatives to meet their social obligation of helping farmers. ICM is born with proper integration and implementation of technological innovations to meet the sole objective of increasing crop yields while reducing on the cost. 

ICM is a strategy which best meets the requirements of sustainable development and sustainable agriculture by managing crops profitably without damaging the environment or depleting natural resources for future generations. It is a dynamic system which uses the latest research, technology and experience in ways that suit local conditions to optimize food production, enhance energy conservation and minimize pollution worldwide.” 

Central to definition is the strategy, sustainable development, sustainable agriculture, concern for the environment and future generations. To address all these things in ICM, we need to cover, directly and indirectly, a range of farm and farm related activities (Figure 1).

For crop production, the following four broad activities are required to be handled directly. These are inter-linked management systems.

• Land and water Management (LWM).

• Integrated Nutrient Management (INM). 

• Integrated Pest Management (IPM).

• General Management (GM).