15/08/2019 - Agriculture

KEY POINTS

·        The formation of the Jal Shakti ministry is, indeed, a promising step in the right direction, in utilizing the water resource effectively.

·        The single largest fact about India’s water is that 90 per cent of it is consumed in farming. And that 80 per cent of this irrigation is for water-guzzling crops  rice, wheat and sugarcane.

·        If we diversify our procurement operations, to include less water-intensive crops, like millets, pulses and oilseeds, especially in India’s drylands, farmers would have the incentive to grow them.

·        Introduce them in the mid-day meal scheme and the integrated child development services, which are the largest child nutrition programmes in human history.

·        This would create an enormous and steady demand for these crops and farmers in the regions where it is ecologically appropriate to grow them would be incentivised to shift away from water-intensive crops.

·        Using sprinkler and drip irrigation help reduce the potential evapotranspitation of water and recharge the ground water aquifer.

·        Agro climatic crop on the basis of region’s climate will reduce the usage of water and help manage water resources.

·        Responding to this situation by raising minimum support prices for these very same crops or through loan waivers or cash transfers completely sidesteps the deeper crisis of farming in India.

·        Improvement in soil and water quality, higher and more stable net incomes for farmers, reduced malnutrition and obesity, and a simple solution to India’s water problem through a huge reduction in the use of water in agriculture.

·        As we diversify the cropping pattern, aligning it more closely with India’s agro-bio-geo-ecological diversity, voluminous quantities of water would be released for meeting the drinking water needs in both rural and urban areas, and the demands of industry.

kindly review

kindly review

Kindly review

Kindly Review. Thank You.