While drought over large parts of the country is giving sleepless nights to the government, Chandulal, a farmer in Chintpatla village of Andhra Pradesh is cautious but not unduly worried on the prospect of low rains. He has generously sown paddy, cotton and sorghum in his four acre of land unconcerned of any big loss.
While most of the bore-well in the village has gone dry due to scanty rainfall during the last two and half months, farmers like Chandulal have a lifeline in the form of check dam constructed under the watershed works initiated few years ago by the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA), a body under Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).
?The yield would be slightly less this season due to deficient rains, but the groundwater would ensure that the yield does not reduce drastically,? Chandulal said. Ranga Reddy district in Andhra Pradesh, where Chandulal?s village is located normally gets around 700 mm of rains while the total rainfall till date has been only around 170 mm.
When FE visited the village on Wednesday, the picture was in sharp contrast to the scene witnessed in other villages across the country. While, parched lands and dying crops are a common sight across much of north India, in Chandulal?s village watershed works have ensured that fair bit of sowing has taken place.
?By building check dams and farm ponds we have managed to tap rain water affectively over the years,? B Venkateswarlu, director, CRIDA told FE. Through low cost water harvesting technology like construction of farm ponds, the rainwater is tapped and conserved for agricultural use.
Mostly the farm ponds are constructed at the lower side of the fields and the runoff from the contributing fields are channelised into the pond.
Similarly Malya, a farmer from Chintpatla village has also sown paddy and castor in his five acre of land at a time when almost half of the estimated 300 acre of agricultural land in his village has remained dry because of scanty rainfall since June.
?The water table has drastically fallen because of over drawing of ground water,? Kaushalya Ramachandran, principal scientist and national fellow (ICAR) said. As part of the contingency plan finalised recently by the Andhra Pradesh government, the state agriculture department has agreed to supply 3.71 lakh quintal seeds to farmers to cover an area of 10.93 lakh hactare under different crops like maize, jowar, castor and red gram.
With country facing drought like situations CRIDA has already suggested works for construction of more farm ponds under National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) for making rainfed areas drought-proof.
CRIDA has been advocating farm pond technology in the rainfed areas as drought proofing measures.