Basing on feasibility of growing crops and vegetations, human civilisations across the earth thrived around river banks and water bodies. And thus, agriculture has been the core of survival of human beings.
Even today most of the world populations dwell around water bodies like rivers, lakes, reservoirs or oceans. History is replete with instances like Indus Valley Civilisation, Gangetic Civilisation, Hwan go Valley Civilisation, Nile and Tigris Civilisations, et al.
For the expansion of agriculture and other usages, modern technology has contributed a lot to harnessing ground water resources. In India, as much as 80 per cent of our fresh water resources are utilised in agriculture alone. Following heavy demand for water from the industry sector and also from the domestic users, it is being increasingly felt that the efficiency of water use in the agriculture sector must improve so that more water can be made available for the booming industries and domestic sector.
India has invested heavily in large reservoirs and canal projects to harness the water flowing through the river systems. Even the Indian Government has been mulling over the years for a river network by interconnecting the ace rivers across the country for augmenting shipping and irrigation as well as curbing flood threats.
However, the efficiency of water usage from these irrigation projects has been miserably low, because of seepage and evaporation losses. Besides, these irrigation projects have led to over irrigation and salinity in the canal banks which has rendered millions of hectares of land uncultivable.
Since the demand for food production is also escalating at a rapid rate to support the population explosion, it is pertinent that solutions are evolved to trim down amount of water presently being used by the agriculture sector and simultaneously enhancing agricultural productivity to meet the emergent food demand.
Amid such a scenario, considerable efforts are being made to adopt modern irrigation practices which can use irrigation water more efficiently at field level. Besides, efforts are also on to modernize canal water usage to increase the effective command area of the major and minor irrigation projects in the country.
Micro irrigation has emerged as the front runner solution which offers the double benefit of appreciable reduction in volume of water used and at the same time results in higher agricultural productivity. Use of fustigation further enhances the productivity and offers the dual advantage of fertiliser saving and non pollution of ground water as well as surface runoff water.
The modern day micro irrigation technology is said to have accidentally discovered in Israel where an apple tree in an orchard was seen to grow much faster and better near a leaking pipe. Today, Israel is a leader in micro irrigation and the world’s who-is-who in micro irrigation are from Israeli Kibbutz. It will not be an exaggeration to say that Israeli agricultural miracle in the arid desert lands was possible because of micro irrigation.
Micro irrigation is not new to India. More than half a century back M/s Jyoti ltd tried to market drip irrigation in the country and M/s Voltas joined the race by marketing drip systems in the oil rich Arab countries. Even Indian researchers tried to develop plastics emitters which are the heart of micro irrigation system. Precision hardware development has not been the forte of Indian technologists and manufacturers, and therefore, most of India’s micro irrigation emitters are either licensed from abroad or are imitations and copies of designs developed abroad.
Micro irrigation adoption results in 50-100 per cent increase in agricultural, horticultural production combined with almost 40-50 per cent decrease in fertiliser consumption. The ball does not stop here; the quality of produce also improves appreciably. However, micro irrigation has been mostly deployed for horticultural crops so far.
With increasing pressure on water availability there is high possibility of using drip irrigation in field crops like rice and wheat. Since major components of drip irrigation systems are made of plastics and rapid developments are taking place in the plastics technology field. In all likelihood, much more cost effective materials would be introduced in the manufacture of drip components in the years to come.
Micro irrigation industry in India has grown appreciably and there are more than 7 million hectares of drip and sprinkler systems installed in the fields till date. All these systems are almost entirely indigenously manufactured. Many of the fruits and vegetables which are available on the grocery shelves round the year are a result of extensive adoption of micro irrigation by farmers of Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and many other States.
A high powered task force constituted under the chairmanship of Chandrababu Naidu, the then Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh, had pegged the potential for micro irrigation in the country at around 69.5 million hectares .Though the task force had envisaged that around 17 million hectares area would be brought under micro irrigation by end of the 11th Plan period with a total field outlay of Rs 61,000 crore, the actual achievement was only 7 million hectares during the same period.
Adoption of micro irrigation was accelerated through Central assistance and many of the developed States have recognised the impact of micro irrigation resulting in appreciable State assistance to the farmers. Normally, around 50 per cent financial assistance is provided to farmers for adopting micro irrigation system by the State and Central Governments. In order to further accelerate the adoption of micro irrigation by farmers some of the States extend further assistance which can reduce cost of system by as much as 70-80 per cent.
With proper planning, design and crop rotation, the cost of the drip system could be recovered in 2-3 years. It has been further seen that farmers adopting micro irrigation are elevated to a higher orbit of agro technology and these farmers start adopting other useful technologies for enhancing quality and quantity of agricultural production including marketing of the produce at a premium.
Since the new Modi Government is committed to develop agriculture at a much faster rate, it is hoped that the budget allocation would be good enough to achieve the task force target at least within a decade. To achieve food security and nutritional targets for the ever increasing population, investment in the micro irrigation sector is an essential requirement. Visionary developments like integrating major irrigation projects with water storage reservoirs and application of the stored water to the field irrigation with sprinkler or drip irrigation must be extensively adopted.
Integration of micro irrigation with major irrigation schemes will have the multiple benefit of increasing canal command areas at much lower cost as compared to creation of fresh irrigation projects. Besides stretching the canal command area, the crop production will be almost doubled and the reservoirs in the command area will also be used for rain water harvesting and aquaculture.
Expectations are high that adequate focus will be given to drip development which can change the face of Indian agriculture and make it monsoon-proof.
Bold and visionary policy decisions with regard to micro irrigation and related advanced agricultural technologies can make India a super power in agriculture and horticulture production.
(Dr Rout is a Bhubaneswar-based management expert)