Agriculture has been the major source of livelihood in India. Agriculture system today can be described as goal oriented manipulations of ecosystems for human gains. Yield and profit maximization approach has led to serious environmental, ecological, economic and social problems. Sustaining household food and nutritional security has been an issue of prime importance to majority of the farmers. The Integrated Farming System (IFS) approach is the way to conserve natural resources and to save the farming community from the vicious cycle of malnutrition and poverty. It is an appropriate combination of farm enterprises viz., cropping system, livestock, fishery, forestry, poultry and the other means for sustainable crop productivity and livestock production resulting in economically profitable return. Two hundred IFSD beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries from Mandya district of Karnataka state were personally interviewed to know their nutritional status. The results revealed that most of the beneficiaries (41.25%) had high nutritional security followed by 38.75 and 20.00 percent had medium and low nutritional security, respectively. Whereas, more than half of the non-beneficiaries had low (60%) nutritional security followed by 30 and 10 percent of them had medium and high nutritional security, respectively. It can be inferred that a larger proportion of IFSD beneficiaries had higher level of nutritional security as they were made aware of IFS technologies through demonstrations, field visits regarding kitchen gardening and dairy and also vegetable seedlings were provided to them, thereby consumption of nutritious vegetables and milk enhanced nutrients in their food. On the contrary, majority of the non-beneficiaries had lower level of nutritional security; hence non-beneficiaries have to be motivated to adopt IFS activities to achieve better nutritional status. Nutritional security is achieved when an adequate quantity, quality, hygienic and socio-culturally acceptable food is available and satisfactorily utilized by all people to lead a healthy lifestyle.

Biography:
Dr. B Krishnamurthy, Professor of Agricultural Extension, University of Agricultural Sciences, Bengaluru, India. Krishnamurthy was specialised in Human Resource Development, Gender Issues, and Capacity Building. B Krishnamurthy served as Co-Principal Investigator for research projects funded by Government of India and Government of Karnataka. He have presented a research paper on Farmers Field School at PGIA, Sri Lanka (1999) and IRRI Philippines (2000) and published 20 research papers. Guided 4 Ph.D scholars and 12 Masters Graduates. He have served as a guest faculty in IMRD faculty exchange program meat Ghent University, Gent, Belgium and University of Humboldt, Berlin, Germany (2013) under Erasmus Mundus Programme.