About 65 per cent of water used for irrigation and 85 per cent for drinking comes from groundwater sources in the country. It is, therefore, of concern that the majority of wells continue to register falls in water levels.
Former Planning Commission member Kirit S Parikh has said, in a recent interview, over-extraction by farmers was a major reason for dwindling supplies. This can't be helped since "groundwater is an open-access resource", leaving anyone with farmland ownership free to pump out water.
A country is seen comfortably placed if per capita water availability is 1,700 cubic metres. By the globally accepted benchmark, India is a significantly water-stressed country, with per capita availability of the resource between 600 and 1,000 cubic metres. But, the country was highly water-surplus in the 1950s. A growing population and spread of the conventional but highly wasteful flood method of irrigation (FMI) have turned us into a water-deficit country. Our challenge is to grow farm production at an annual rate of four per cent during the current 12th Plan against 3.6 per cent in the earlier plan, to arrest declining per capita availability of foodgrains.
Growing urbanisation and finding large spaces for new industries make it almost impossible to add new land parcels to 140 million hectares now under the cultivation. Since fresh land for farming will not be available, we have to depend on new high-yield technologies and bringing more and more areas under irrigation for boosting production on a sustainable basis. Our farm sector, which has a 14.1 per cent share of GDP (gross domestic product), remains largely rain-dependent with 62 million hectares having irrigation coverage.
A Harvard Business School case study 'Jain Irrigation: Inclusive growth for Indian farmers' says just about five per cent of Indian irrigated fields have the benefit of water saving and top-soil and nutrient-protective micro irrigation system (MIS). In the Indian context of persistent water scarcity, MIS comprising drip and sprinkler irrigational practices needs rapid promotion through joint action by the government and leading producers of the system. The Harvard study found MIS "up to 70 per cent more effective in water use efficiency", as it increased fertiliser use efficiency by 30 per cent. The latter happens because in MIS, nutrients are released through the system, instead of their application on top of the soil leading to wastage during the periodic flooding of fields under FMI. More, water and nutrients floating in the fields let weeds flourish. This arrests healthy crop growth.
For a good number of years, the government is backing MIS. Equally important, convinced by the business model of the likes of Jain Irrigation, banks are lending money to farmers to install drip and sprinkler irrigation systems, accepting their land holdings as collateral. Both for its capacity to conserve water and save fertiliser and electricity vis-a-vis FMI, the government will do well to find from industry what more needs to be done to encourage farmers to use MIS. The 2013-14 Union budget has maintained fertiliser subsidy at last year's level of Rs 66,000 crore. But clearing the unpaid subsidy for 2012-13 will claim a good portion of this year's provision. The greater the spread of MIS, the bigger will be the saving on fertiliser consumption per unit of land and, therefore, the subsidy.
Similarly, MIS requiring less water will result in lowering the heavily subsidised electricity consumption on irrigation.
The point to be considered is how effective MIS will be in our country, where 140 million hectares is owned millions of farmers with an average farm size of less than two hectares. That was the challenge for Jain Irrigation when it thought of venturing into MIS in the 1980s. As we know, the rest of the world inducted micro irrigation in farming, seeing the wonders it had done to growing of crops with trend-setting productivity in highly water stressed Israel. The micro irrigation technology in employment in the 1980s was good for "large farms with thousands of acres under cultivation. What we were required to do was to adapt the technology to work for one or two acre farms in our country. We started with the premise that MIS would work if we give our farmers only that amount of technology they would be comfortable with," says Jain Irrigation Chairman Bhavarlal Jain.
Having the ideal MIS in place is one thing but what put the ingenuity of the company to test was convincing millions of small farmers to migrate from the age-old practice of FMI to micro irrigation. The migration required small farmers mortgaging ancestral farmlands, their only source of livelihood, to lending banks. Farmers risked their livelihood and the government too came along with subsidy as MIS manufacturers proved the payback period for investment in micro irrigation would be short. More, the global experience is MIS boosts land productivity. The success of irrigating farmland through FMI and MIS will finally depend on our capacity to store and transport water in increasingly larger quantities. Encouragingly, the government has started making liberal provision in its budget in recent years for promotion of integrated watershed management.
Former Planning Commission member Kirit S Parikh has said, in a recent interview, over-extraction by farmers was a major reason for dwindling supplies. This can't be helped since "groundwater is an open-access resource", leaving anyone with farmland ownership free to pump out water.
A country is seen comfortably placed if per capita water availability is 1,700 cubic metres. By the globally accepted benchmark, India is a significantly water-stressed country, with per capita availability of the resource between 600 and 1,000 cubic metres. But, the country was highly water-surplus in the 1950s. A growing population and spread of the conventional but highly wasteful flood method of irrigation (FMI) have turned us into a water-deficit country. Our challenge is to grow farm production at an annual rate of four per cent during the current 12th Plan against 3.6 per cent in the earlier plan, to arrest declining per capita availability of foodgrains.
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Growing urbanisation and finding large spaces for new industries make it almost impossible to add new land parcels to 140 million hectares now under the cultivation. Since fresh land for farming will not be available, we have to depend on new high-yield technologies and bringing more and more areas under irrigation for boosting production on a sustainable basis. Our farm sector, which has a 14.1 per cent share of GDP (gross domestic product), remains largely rain-dependent with 62 million hectares having irrigation coverage.
A Harvard Business School case study 'Jain Irrigation: Inclusive growth for Indian farmers' says just about five per cent of Indian irrigated fields have the benefit of water saving and top-soil and nutrient-protective micro irrigation system (MIS). In the Indian context of persistent water scarcity, MIS comprising drip and sprinkler irrigational practices needs rapid promotion through joint action by the government and leading producers of the system. The Harvard study found MIS "up to 70 per cent more effective in water use efficiency", as it increased fertiliser use efficiency by 30 per cent. The latter happens because in MIS, nutrients are released through the system, instead of their application on top of the soil leading to wastage during the periodic flooding of fields under FMI. More, water and nutrients floating in the fields let weeds flourish. This arrests healthy crop growth.
For a good number of years, the government is backing MIS. Equally important, convinced by the business model of the likes of Jain Irrigation, banks are lending money to farmers to install drip and sprinkler irrigation systems, accepting their land holdings as collateral. Both for its capacity to conserve water and save fertiliser and electricity vis-a-vis FMI, the government will do well to find from industry what more needs to be done to encourage farmers to use MIS. The 2013-14 Union budget has maintained fertiliser subsidy at last year's level of Rs 66,000 crore. But clearing the unpaid subsidy for 2012-13 will claim a good portion of this year's provision. The greater the spread of MIS, the bigger will be the saving on fertiliser consumption per unit of land and, therefore, the subsidy.
Similarly, MIS requiring less water will result in lowering the heavily subsidised electricity consumption on irrigation.
The point to be considered is how effective MIS will be in our country, where 140 million hectares is owned millions of farmers with an average farm size of less than two hectares. That was the challenge for Jain Irrigation when it thought of venturing into MIS in the 1980s. As we know, the rest of the world inducted micro irrigation in farming, seeing the wonders it had done to growing of crops with trend-setting productivity in highly water stressed Israel. The micro irrigation technology in employment in the 1980s was good for "large farms with thousands of acres under cultivation. What we were required to do was to adapt the technology to work for one or two acre farms in our country. We started with the premise that MIS would work if we give our farmers only that amount of technology they would be comfortable with," says Jain Irrigation Chairman Bhavarlal Jain.
Having the ideal MIS in place is one thing but what put the ingenuity of the company to test was convincing millions of small farmers to migrate from the age-old practice of FMI to micro irrigation. The migration required small farmers mortgaging ancestral farmlands, their only source of livelihood, to lending banks. Farmers risked their livelihood and the government too came along with subsidy as MIS manufacturers proved the payback period for investment in micro irrigation would be short. More, the global experience is MIS boosts land productivity. The success of irrigating farmland through FMI and MIS will finally depend on our capacity to store and transport water in increasingly larger quantities. Encouragingly, the government has started making liberal provision in its budget in recent years for promotion of integrated watershed management.