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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Rainfed farming: A watershed moment -Harish Damodaran

Rainfed farming: A watershed moment -Harish Damodaran

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published Published on Aug 12, 2016   modified Modified on Aug 12, 2016
-The Indian Express

A Pulses Revolution is possible even in the most backward districts, as a PPP project in Bundelkhand has shown.

Damoh (Madhya Pradesh): Zahim Khan has two major worries, as he surveys the urad (black gram) crop on 14 out of the 20-acres land being jointly cultivated by him with 13 other farmers.

The immediate concern is rains. Damoh district in Madhya Pradesh’s Bundelkhand region, of which his village Somkheda is part, has received 1,111.5 millimetres (mm) of rainfall in the current monsoon season from

June 1 to August 10. That is 71 per cent above the normal average for this period.

“We first planted on July 1, but had to re-sow on July 15 as there was water-logging from too much rains. It has rained quite a lot even since then, but thankfully not in the last two days,” says Khan, who has pooled his 1.5 acres with others — they include Santosh Patel, Mansingh Thakur and Jeeva Rajak, all from different communities — to create a consolidated 20-acre plot.

The second worry has to do with prices. Khan and his fellow cultivators planted urad on 14 acres — the balance six is under paddy — encouraged by the returns from the summer moong or green gram, which they had sowed on their entire 20 acres on April 1 and harvested over the second week of June. With yields at 4-6 quintals an acre and average realisations of Rs 5,000-5,500 per quintal, there was something to smile about.

But urad could turn out different. MP has seen 10.02 lakh hectares (lh) planted to urad this time, up from 8.31 lh last year, with its total kharif pulses area, too, rising from 15.10 lh to 18.55 lh. The higher sowing — mainly at the expense of soyabean whose acreage has dropped from 58.07 lh to 53.61 lh — has prompted fears of prices crashing when the crop is harvested towards end-September/early-October.

“It happened with onions, which we grew on six acres in the last rabi season (sowing in early-November, transplanting in mid-December and harvesting in March). Prices had reached Rs 4,000 per quintal in August-September, only to crash to Rs 300-400 levels by April-May. What’s the guarantee this won’t take place in urad?”, asks Khan.

The same concern is voiced by farmers about 7 km away in Rageda village, where some 450 hectares have come under urad and arhar (pigeon-pea), as against 250 hectares last year. “We have stopped growing soyabean, as it can neither survive water-logged nor drought conditions. Also, realisations are just Rs 3,200-3,400 per quintal, compared to Rs 5,000-6,000 for urad and Rs 9,000 for arhar,” notes Govind Singh, who has sown arhar on three and urad on two out his five acres. Both were planted on July 15, with arhar being a 170-180 day crop and urad maturing in 75-80 days. Singh is, however, aware that the high rates for pulses need not be repeated this year. “We know that from onions. In 2015, our village produced 9,000-10,000 quintals and we got around Rs 3,500 per quintal. This rabi season, we produced 18,000 quintals and they fetched Rs 300-400. The same thing cannot be ruled out for urad and arhar,” he admits.

The striking thing about farmers in both Somkheda and Rageda is their willingness and capacity to experiment with a range of crops. This has primarily come from access to irrigation, courtesy the Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP), making intensive cultivation possible even in regions such as Bundelkhand.

The problem in Bundelkhand — at least the districts falling in MP — is not lack of rains. Damoh’s normal annual rainfall of 1,180.6 mm, for instance, is close to the all-India long period average of 1,186.2 mm. But out of the 1,180.6 mm, 1071 mm or 91 per cent is received in just the four monsoon months of June-September. This time, the district has already got 1,111.5 mm by August 10!

“The real issue isn’t rains as much as the thin soils that cannot hold water for too long. The average soil depth in Damoh is between 60 and 300 cm, below which it is all hard strata comprising sedimentary rocks: shale, limestone, slate and sandstones. So unlike in, say, Bhopal where soil depths can be 1,000 cm and more, there’s little scope for groundwater recharge or digging deep tube-wells here,” explains Waman Kulkarni, manager (Watershed Management and Sustainability) at Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.

The poor soil depth, texture and permeability means that much of the yearly rainwater, delivered within a short time span, is subject to surface runoff. Rather than recharging the aquifer, the monsoon rains merely end up recharging the rivers – the Bearma and Sonar, which further feed into the Ken, a tributary of the Yamuna. The only alternative, then, is to focus on surface water management with a view to control runoff and associated soil erosion.

M&M, in partnership with the MP government, has implemented a project under the IWMP aimed at harvesting of surface water on 9,960 hectares covering 32 villages of Damoh. It has basically involved digging continuous contour trenches and building gully plugs along the hill slopes (to slow down water flow); construction of earthen percolation tanks, rock-filled wire mesh gabions and farm bunds in the middle catchments; and stop dams in low-lying areas.

The effects have been palpable. Between 2011-12 (before the project started) and 2015-16, the cropped area under paddy in the 32 villages went up from 1,936 to 2,214 hectares, while rising from 1,692 to 2,692 hectares for wheat, from 2,855 to 3,093 hectares for chana (chickpea), from 583 to 1,948 hectares for urad, from 291 to 546 hectares for kharif moong, and from 52 to 630 hectares for onion and other vegetables. Most significant, though, has been summer moong, which no farmer had grown previously. Last year, the coverage under it touched 281 hectares. “We could never imagine raising a third crop, as there was no water after January and even wheat could be given only 2-3 irrigations. But now, even after 4-5 irrigations for wheat, we can take a summer moong crop in April-June by giving water through sprinklers,” points out Bharat Singh, a four-acre farmer from Deori Jamadar village.

With irrigation, farmers have also been incentivised to plant certified (as opposed to local non-descript) seeds from improved publicly-bred varieties – for instance, ‘Megha’ and ‘Samrat’ moong or ‘Type-9’ urad from the Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur. In Somkheda, which is in the edge of the Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary, Khan and his comrades have even put up a common fence to protect their standing crop against wild boars, nilgai, chital deer and stray cattle. The cost of the wire for this, around Rs 1 lakh, has been funded by the project.

For a state with an already developed rural roads network and mandi infrastructure to enable farmers bring their produce – visible even in a backward district like Damoh – a Pulses Revolution should not be difficult. Assured government procurement and access to irrigation through watershed management can make this all the more possible.

The Indian Express, 11 August, 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/rainfed-farming-a-watershed-moment-2967071/


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