Recreating water bodies, improved farming techniques yield better income

When the National Agro Foundation, a brainchild of the late C Subramaniam, the architect of India’s green revolution, set about sharing agro technology upgrades with farmers in Kanchipuram district near Chennai in 2003, their response was: All this is fine, but where is the water?

“This set us thinking. Kanchipuram was once known as the district of lakes, and gets an annual rainfall of 1,000 mm, but concentrated in two months,” says MR Ramasubramanian, Executive Director of the Foundation.

A double whammy was that along with the rainwater runoff, the rich top soil was washed away each year. An investigation with remote sensing maps and discussion with village elders revealed that numerous water bodies — tanks, ponds, wells etc had all disappeared over the years. So the Foundation, along with NABARD, launched a project to recreate water bodies through four watershed projects on 5,400 hectares at a cost of ₹4.62 crore.

The community was involved in repair and renovation, better use of water, modern farming techniques, resulting in better incomes and increased cropping cycles.

Crop cycles

Most of the farmers have small to medium landholding (2-3 hectares), and the project helped them move from one cropping cycle to two, sometimes even three, and profits went up by ₹20,000-40,000 per acre a year, says SV Murugan, Joint Director in charge of the project. The more enterprising ones, such as Nallamuthu, an IT graduate, went in for floriculture and horticulture and earned over ₹7 lakh.

Though planned in 2007, on a 50:50 basis between NABARD and the Tamil Nadu Government, grant of funds has been delayed, and work on only 1,000 hectares has been completed.

When work on the watershed programme began, both on farm as well as common land, all the land looked flat as the uncared for water bodies had filled up with soil and silt. Those renovated or recreated are now able to hold over one lakh litres of water; and one particular tank 7 lakh litres.

Apart from percolation ponds, groundwater recharge, water absorption trenches, supply channels were created or repaired, as also bunds, and water bodies linked to enable water to flow from one tank to another, one village to another; in one case 20 villages were thus linked.

Peak summer 

“Based on land ingredient and slope we do different kinds of bunding so that natural harvesting of rainwater takes place,” says Ramasubramaniam, recalling the Tamil adage: “Running water should be made to walk and walking water to sit.”

With the water table going up, “in peak summer months the wells are filled to the top. The last two years have seen deficient rainfall but farmers have managed well,” says Murugan.

The green cover in the entire area has gone up, top soil is conserved, resulting in farmers getting additional income. “Once water is conserved and used optimally, next comes technology, nutritional security for women through kitchen gardens, and then upgrades in value through organic cultivation. We ask farmers to reduce agro chemicals and use them only as supplements where necessary,” says SS Rajsekar, Managing Trustee.

The biggest benefit is that 280 acres of underutilised land has now been made fertile and brought under cultivation, he adds. “Also, the children of educated people like Nallamuthu will be enthused to stay in agriculture and not leave it for jobs in cities. And, such projects are the first steps towards the linking of rivers,” adds Rajsekar.

source: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com / Business Line / Home> Opinion> Columns  / by Rasheeda Bhagat / Chennai – August 15th, 2014