Sustainability, energy budgeting, and life cycle assessment of crop-dairy-fish-poultry mixed farming system for coastal lowlands under humid tropic condition of India

A study was conducted from 2015 to 2018 to find out the sustainability, profitability, energy efficiency and environmental impact of crop-livestock-aquaculture integration in west coast of India. Rice grown in rice-baby corn sequence recorded higher yield than rice-cowpea system. About 4 ton of fodder and 0.7 ton of azolla were produced and recycled as feed to the dairy animals. The household requirements of vegetables and fruits were produced in the kitchen garden (80 m(2)). The farming system recorded energy efficiency, net energy gain, and energy profitability of 2.63, 103311 MJ and 1.63 MJ, respectively. The greenhouse gas emission from the system was found to be 10.7 t CO2 eq. and the main contributor to the total emission were enteric methane emissions (24%) from livestock component, diesel consumptions (16%) and N2O emissions mainly from the chemical fertilizers (13%). The percent share of different components to the net return was found higher in cropping systems (40.5%) followed by dairy (37.8%) with an employment potential of 269 man-days/year. The study conclusively reveals that integration of dairy, fishery, poultry components with diversified cropping in coastal lowland ecosystem is essential to offset the ecological imbalances arising due to continuous cultivation of rice crop. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.