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BANGALORE FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2013
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With availability of water reducing steadily, farmers so for habituated to paddy and sugarcane have now begun breaking habit, and are going in for crops that are less water-dependent, writes M Raghuram
Growers begin growing up F
or farmer Nanjunde Gowda of Maddur, it has been a lesson learnt the hard way. After the supreme court order to Karnataka to release 2.44 TMC water to Tamil Nadu, standing crop of sugarcane in over 30,000 hectares in Maddur started drying up. Several farmers, including Gowda, were forced to harvest the crop before time. The farmer found that part of the crop in his field was underdeveloped. Gowda had no options. Leaving them on the field for some more time would involve another round of harvesting and the cost of labour was mindboggling. Gowda decided to harvest the underdeveloped cane to the factory, where he was told that he would get only 85 percent money as the cane’s quality was not satisfactory. Later, he spoke to scientists of agriculture department, who told him that the low yield was due to undernourishment caused by low availability of water. “ I have decided now that I must move away from water-intensive crops to less water- dependent crops,” says a chastened Gowda. The realisation that the days of waterintensive crops were has begun to dawn on both farmers and the government. With rainfall volumes recording an erratic pattern over the last few years, farmers in major agriculture belts -Northern riparian area of Cauvery basin and the evergreen Tungabhadra basin - have begun to feel that pinch of water shortage. Land to the extent of 62,000 hectares was left fallow during the khariff 2012 and rabi 2012-13 in the two basins. Tungabhadra basin and riparian course has alone left 44,000 hectares fallow due to inadequate water. Once a rich paddy growing area, Udupi, Uttara Kannada and Dakshina Kannada have also given up water intensive crops, but here the land was not left fallow. The innovative farmers were quick to take up horticulture, floriculture, plantation and commercial crops which were not as water intensive as paddy. The transformation from paddy to other crops was so fast in Dakshina Kannada that the government has declared it as a horticulture district. In Sullia taluk of Dakshina Kannada, paddy was grown in only 500 acres in rabi 201213 against 6000 acres in 1999, which is a classical case of shifting away from water intensive crops to less water dependent crops. In this backdrop, the government has appealed to farmers to grow crops that require less water. A directive from the deputy commissioner’s office of Chikkaballapur has asked farmers to go in for less water-dependent crops. “Paddy, potato, tomato, and onion are water-intensive crops. With the ground water table hitting abysmal depths, there is no point in depending on ground waterintensive crops, especially in the rabi season which is not serviced by the southwest monsoon. The order clearly says that there was an urgent need to implement measures to conserve groundwater in order to bring up the groundwater level,” joint director of agriculture S Venkataramu says. The agriculture department is also planning to popularise system of root intensification (SRI) method that is practiced in Madagascar, in a big way in Karnataka, es-
pecially in areas that go for the second crop of paddy (rabi). This system needs less water and less labour. The root intensification technique is slow to catch up, but surely will. “We started in 2009 in Dakshina Kannada on an experimental basis in few pockets, but we now have over 500 hectares under SRI method of paddy cultivation and our Raitha Samparka Kendras (farmer contact centres) are getting calls from the farmers about the SRI method,” P Mohan, joint director of agriculture, Dakshina Kannada, told DNA. “During the first decade of the 21st century, two contrasting trends have been noticed. India is being recognised as the global power in the key economic sectors with consistent high economic growth and its slow growth observed in the agriculture sector is causing concerns for the future food and nutritional security of the country,” says says an overview compiled by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). Indian agriculture contributes 8 per cent of global agricultural gross domestic product to support 18 per cent of world population on only 9 per cent of world’s arable land and 2.3 per cent of geographical area, the study points out. Nearly a third of the country’s population lives below poverty line, and about 80 per cent of India’s land mass is highly vulnerable to drought, floods and cyclones, it points out. On the brighter side, India possesses substantial biodiversity — nearly 8 per cent of the world’s documented animal and plant species are found in the country. Many of these are considered crucial for livelihood security of poor and vulnerable population. Therefore, conservation of natural resources including ground water augmentation of surface water and harness of rain water, maintenance of biological wealth and acceleration of agricultural growth are considered of paramount importance in the present context as well as of the future, the study says. The government of Karnataka asked its agriculture department to “convince” farmers to cultivate crops that are not dependent on ground water and move away from water-intensive crops in arid areas. “Raitha Samparka Kendras have been briefed to guide the farmers accordingly. Gone were the days when we could afford the luxury of growing water-intensive
The water-intensive trap
crops by exploiting ground water. It is also high time that we restrict water-intensive crops only to those areas that have supply of surface water or those serviced by monsoons,” said Krishi Pandit award winner of 2011-12 K Tyampa Naik of Puttur. The agriculture department has asked the joint directors to form taluk-level committees for guiding farmers to take up crops in accordance with the water availability of water in their respective areas. Some of the first districts to constitute such committees were Mandya, Shimoga, Udupi, Dakshina Kannada, Mysore, Chamarajanagar, Ramanagara, Hassan, Tumkur and Chikkaballapur. Agricultural scientists are also worried that climate change and global warming may have a harmful impact on land productivity and water availability. The first green revolution had bypassed dry land farming. More equitable, efficient and rational systems are available within our agricultural calendars, but a quick technology transfer to interface weather conditions, water estimation for different crops has to be done, they feel. These systems should have new technologies and new production regimes for rain-fed and dryland agriculture. Observers of Indian economy have commended the performance of Indian agricultural sector during the global food crisis in 2008. They have observed that the country had done better than several developing countries. “This was mainly due to timely intervention on all points, crop patterning, crop diversion, judicious use of water and other inputs. In that year year (2008), Indian farmers grew more than their usual tonnage,” said Krishi Pandit Prabhakar Mayya of Belthangady. According to statistics available with the agriculture department, agriculture land holding in India is ever-shrinking, not just in volumes but also in size of holdings. The average size of the landholding declined to 1.32 ha in 2000-01 from 2.30 ha in 197071. The number of operational holdings increased from 70 million to 121 million in the same period. The average size of holding in India would be as low as 0.68 ha in 2020, making over 20 per cent of the holdings unviable for cultivation using modern techniques. While the governments of Madhya
Pradesh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra have already completed the field study and analysis of phasing out the ‘thirsty crops’ (water-intensive crops) including paddy and sugarcane, Karnataka is heavily dependent on such crops in Cauvery and Thungabhadra basins, when these crops should have been relegated to the rain water-fed areas or stable surface water areas, feel Krishi Pandits. “with the present kind of transportation and market dynamics it was foolish to grow water intensive crops in water deficient areas by exploiting ground and surface water,” says Dr LC Soans of Moodbidri, who blazed a trail of success from drip irrigation as early as in 1970s in intercropping of pineapple and spices. Citing Bijapur and Bidar as fine examples of crop diversion, Soans pointed out that farmers there were quick to switch over to crops like grape, pomegranate and even pineapple that can be cultivated through drip irrigation. However, the situation in Dakshina Kannada is a kind of anti-climax. It is not for want of water that large expanses of arable lands have been left fallow, but it was due to a terrible shortage of labour. In the coastal districts, agricultural labour is hard to come by at viable costs, Soans says. Scientists at the Integrated Agromet Advisory Services (IAAS) at Naganahalli in Mysore, in collaboration with the University of Agricultural Sciences, Hebbal, Bangalore, and India Meteorological Department have begun sending agro-advisory bulletins to raitha samparka kendras and to group subscribers on the net, one of the first integrated set of information. The bulletins have rainfall forecast, humidity, weather conditions for standing crops, both agriculture and horticulture, pest control and production and application of green manure. “At harvest time, we will also advise farmers on the methods of harvesting the produce. Yet our basic thrust is towards using water judiciously for agriculture which will come up soon,” say the research officials at the IAAS. According to statistics available with the agriculture department, over 11 lakh hectares of land in Cauvery basin part of Karnataka are under water-intensive farming, while in Tungabhadra basin, nine lakh hectares are being cultivated. Sugarcane, paddy, ragi, jowar, sunflower, tomato, potato, water melon, groundnuts were some of the water guzzling crops that are grown in these two agrarian zones. “In many places like Chamarajanagar, Mysore, Mandya, Hassan and Shimoga, the same type of crops were grown over the last few centuries - paddy, sugarcane, groundnut and potato being at the top of the list. It all happens as per the village council diktats, but in the recent years, the agriculture officials visit the villages and give talks on what should be grown on the fields,” says said Dasae Gowda of Malavalli in Mandya district. “Many of us have been benefited from the talks, as we found out that the crop rotation actually increases the soil fertility and every alternative crop needs lesser water. In fact we are already contributing to water conservation,” says Gowda.
Anantha Subramanyam K
Paddy is the principal crop of the Cauvery delta region in both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Paddy, which is a waterintensive crop, is grown by farmers in two seasons— kharif and rabi in Karnataka
In Tamil Nadu, farmers have three harvests — kuruvai (June-September), thaladi (October to December) and samba (August- January)
m_raghuram@dnaindia.net
About 1.5 million hectares (ha) of land are under paddy cultivation in Karnataka