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Due to complexity of smallholder farms, many times technologies with great potential fail to achieve the desired impact in leveraging productivity and profitability of the farming community. In the Indo-Gangetic Plains there is an urgent need to understand the diversity of farm households, identifying the main drivers deciding their system thus, classifying them into homogenous groups. In the present study, the diversity of smallholder farms was assessed using crop, livestock and income related characteristics and associated farm mechanization. Using principal component analysis and cluster analysis for 252 farm households, 4 farm types were identified i.e. Type 1. Small Farm households with cereal-based cropping system and subsistence livestock (39%), Type 2. Small Farm households with diversified cropping system dominated by cereal and fodder crops with only cattle herd (9%), Type 3. Marginal Farm household with diversified cropping system dominated by cash crop and herd comprising of only cattle (39%), Type 4. Marginal Farm household with diversified cropping system dominated by cereal crops and herd dominated by small ruminants (12%). Based on the constraints identified for different components of farming systems, low-cost interventions were planned for each farm type. These interventions have resulted in 84.8–103.2 per cent increase in the income of the farm HH under study suggesting usefulness of typology-based intervention planning in increasing income of small farm holders.

Many Climate Smart Agricultural (CSA) technologies fail to achieve their full potential impact due to low levels of adoption by smallholder farmers and difficulties in scaling CSA. This paper presents how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can act as change agents for the uptake of CSA technologies where their business models may be seen as adoption and scaling mechanisms. Drawing upon our fieldwork in Punjab (India) during which over 100 respondents have been interviewed, critical issues and enabling factors for the business model of two types of SMEs, i.e. farmer cooperatives and individual service providers of climate smart technologies have been identified. Enabling factors supporting adoption are driven by scientific and practical evidence of CSA technologies, good partnership between SMEs and research institutes, good customer relationships and effective channels through farmers’ field trials. Critical issues consist of distortive government subsidies on energy and the lack of market intelligence affecting the profitability of the business model. Scaling is enhanced through market intelligence and a favouring regulatory landscape. However, difficult socio-economic circumstances and distortive government subsidies limit the role of SMEs business model as mechanism for scaling

Non-PR, IFPRI5; CRP7, SAO, CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)