Water Conserving Crop Packages and Practices

WATER CONSERVING CROP PACKAGES AND PRACTICES

Water is a precious resource, which is fast being depleted. The need for judicious use of existing water resources cannot be overemphasized. While the cultivation of irrigation water intensive crops such as rice and sugarcane are required, the monopolization of irrigation by these crops is at the cost of ensuring drinking water, restricting the use of the area cultivated, biomass generated, and employment created. The latter could have been possible with extensive use of water.

The bias of farmers towards water intensive crop cultivation is not only due to the relative high productivity of these crops, but also because of economic and institutional factors. While it is true that agro-climatic factors affect which crops cultivators decide to grow, price structures, marketing facilities available for these crops, relative ease of cultivation, and the low risk of crop failure are all factors that they also take into consideration.

Attempts to encourage low water intensive agriculture have had a limited impact because they have not taken economic and institutional factors into consideration. Instead segmented approaches have been used. In these approaches, single dry crops are considered in isolation and their cultivation is encouraged based on relative profitability criteria. This approach ignores the conditions which facilitate/constrain the adoption of a crop which have been previously mentioned. Secondly, the policy packages has been inconsistent i.e. while rice and sugarcane are sought to be discouraged by some policy changes, they are often encouraged by other policies such as those that provide input subsidies and marketing facilities to the cultivators of these same crops. In addition, appropriate low water intensive crops are seldom demonstrated under field conditions. Their promotion is based on experiments done in specialized laboratory environments.
Typically two approaches are adopted as mechanisms for controlling water supply for agriculture:

1. Instituting systems and controls on the water supply side i.e. by controlling the volume available to the user. This can be done directly by measuring the volume supplied or indirectly by regulating the 'time' of user's access to (presumably uniform) flow in the channel, as is done under 'Warabandi' system in parts of Northern India. Alternatively it can be affected by controlling electricity/diesel supply in case of ground water extraction.

This approach has the following shortcomings -

"Water regulation from supply side tends to continue yielding inequitable distribution amongst recipients. PIM is unlikely to make a dent in the absence of drastic changes in crop pattern since the natural and social environment dictating the water consumptive crop choices continues as before.

"Regulating the supply of ground water is not possible, because no legislation restricting its extraction exists.

2. The other viewpoint is to attempt to control the demand for water by influencing the pattern of utilization of water for agriculture. If the users demand less water, the conflict of competitive demand is correspondingly reduced. This may enable more equitable distribution.

This approach has a shortcoming. Changes in cropping pattern and practices can be stipulated or prescribed by the governing authority. However rural population has a tendency to resist such prescriptions.

Water demand can be influenced indirectly by strategically targeting the parameters that bear on the decision making process of individual producer such as price support system, risk factors, investment levels, technological feasibility etc. In fact, the only possibility of reconciling individual rationality of profitable agriculture with socially desirable equity objectives is to explore combinations of low water consumption crop choices and practices which can be made attractive options. Policies which influence the socio-economic-techno environment of 'rational' producer can be evolved so that it becomes economically attractive as well as practically feasible for him to grow less water demanding crop package.

Dr. Jasveen Jairath, Project Director, SaciWaters,
E-mail: saciwaters@rediffmail.com

South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies (SaciWATERs) is a Consortium comprising of senior scholars based in academic institutions and NGOs in the different South Asian countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka).
For more information visit www.saciwaters.org