Paddy cum fish culture in north-eastern states of India: A better scope in the exploitation of resources

摘要

The people of North-East India depend on diverse agricultural practices ranging from a variety of shifting aquaculture systems, fallow systems, home gardens and sedentary systems, such as wet-rice cultivation (Ramakrishna 1984, 1992). The system of raising fish from the rice fields probably started in the northeast with the beginning of the rice cultivation itself, because the water logged rice fields form natural habitat for wild fish. It is believed to have appeared first only as the simple capturedevice (Das 2002). Cultivating rice and fish together has existed for about 2,000 years in some parts of Southeast Asia. However, this beneficial cultivation system was gradually abandoned because of population pressures, decreasing stocks of wild fishand the green revolution, which emphasized high-input monoculture using high-yield rice varieties, pesticides and herbicides.