In the mid-1970s, when Mahesh Shrivastav’s family bought land in the water-scarce district of Sehore in Madhya Pradesh, it looked more like scrub forest than farmland. The family grew Sarbati wheat, a low-irrigation variety, but profits were modest. Seeking better returns, Shrivastav turned to intercropping—planting food crops alongside fruit trees. With support from the horticulture department, he planted 300 guava and 300 mango saplings and installed drip irrigation under a state subsidy scheme.
Today, his farm is a layered system of mango, guava, wheat, livestock, and organic inputs—an example of agroforestry taking root in central India.
Nearly 60 kilometers away in Sanchi, Mehraban Rajput followed a similar path. In the 1980s, he planted 100 mango saplings with official guidance; when all survived, he received 100 more. Over time, he added ginger, garlic, onions, and wheat beneath the trees. Despite neighbors’ warning that trees would reduce crop yields, Rajput found that certain crops thrive in partial shade and that overall yields remained stable. Cows rest under mango trees; their dung becomes compost, while fallen leaves turn to mulch.
At the Indian Institute of Forest Management in Bhopal, researcher Bhimappa Kittur describes trees as providers of “ecosystem services.” They support biodiversity, recycle nutrients, reduce soil evaporation, and store carbon for decades. Agroforestry, he emphasizes, is region-specific: teak and amla in central India, poplar in the north, coconut and arecanut in humid coastal belts.
Aligned with India’s National Agroforestry Policy, Madhya Pradesh offers subsidies for drip irrigation, saplings, and livestock integration. Yet adoption remains uneven.
For farmers like Shrivastav and Rajput, agroforestry is less a policy slogan than a lived experiment—one that trades short-term gains for long-term ecological and economic resilience.
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