Policy-supported intensive agriculture led to unsustainable groundwater use, water shortage
India is the second-largest producer of wheat in the world, with over 30 million hectares in the nation devoted to producing this crop. But with extreme groundwater depletion, the cropping intensity or the quantity of land planted in the winter season may lower by as much as 20% by 2025, notes a brand new paper. Some of the vital winter crops are wheat, barley, mustard and peas.
The worldwide crew studied India’s three foremost irrigation sorts on winter cropped areas: dug wells, tube wells, canals, and likewise analysed the groundwater knowledge from the Central Ground Water Board. They discovered that 13% of the villages in which farmers plant a winter crop are positioned in critically water-depleted areas. The crew writes that these villages may lose 68% of their cropped space in future if entry to all groundwater irrigation is misplaced. The outcomes recommend that these losses will largely happen in northwest and central India.
Alternative sources
The crew then checked out canals to know if they are often promoted instead irrigation supply and as an adaptation technique to falling groundwater tables. But the outcomes confirmed that “switching to canal irrigation has limited adaptation potential at the national scale. We find that even if all regions that are currently using depleted groundwater for irrigation will switch to using canal irrigation, cropping intensity may decline by 7% nationally,” notes the paper revealed in Science Advances.
When requested what new or extra adaptation methods might be applied, corresponding writer Meha Jain explains: “We can conjecture based on other literature and say that adoption of water-saving technologies like a sprinkler, drip irrigation and maybe switching to less water-intensive crops may help use the limited groundwater resources more effectively,” She is from the School for Environment and Sustainability on the University of Michigan.
Her crew is now attempting to know how groundwater depletion has already diminished yields and cropped areas in India over the past 20 years, and likewise how local weather change may have an effect on the longer term availability of groundwater sources.
Unsuited soils
Balwinder Singh from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, New Delhi, explains extra concerning the issues wheat farmers face in our nation. “There are several first-generation (productivity) and second-generation (sustainability) problems. In the green revolution era, policy-supported environment led to a large increase in rice cultivation in northwestern India mainly in Punjab and Haryana which are ecologically less suitable for rice cultivation due to predominantly light soils.”
He explains that this policy-supported intensive agriculture led to unsustainable groundwater use for irrigation and in flip groundwater shortage. There was additionally post-harvest residue burning to make means for the well timed sowing of wheat. He is among the authors of the paper.
Poor infrastructure
He provides that there are sufficient groundwater sources supported with increased monsoon rainfall in japanese Indian states like Bihar. But because of lack of sufficient irrigation infrastructure, farmers will not be in a position to make use of pure sources there.
“So we need better policies in eastern India to expand the irrigation and thus increase agriculture productivity. This will also release some pressure from northwestern Indian states,” he concludes.
