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With agriculture consuming lion's share of the water diverted from the hydrological system in countries like India, and with expected future growth in demand for food grains and other agricultural outputs, the only way to make more water available for ecosystem health and environment is through constant improvement in agricultural water productivity. This could be in terms of producing more crop outputs per unit of water consumed for production; and raising the net farm income from crop, dairy, fish and tree production in regions where water is scarce and agriculture is in direct competition with the environment and other sectors of water use.
The limited research available from India shows that there are great difficulties in achieving this unless we compromise on regional and domestic food security, farming system resilience, rural employment etc.
There needs to be great deal of debate on how water productivity improvement and water saving from agriculture can be achieved without compromising on major objectives such as food security, livelihoods, and employment generation in rural areas. Particularly, the constraints and opportunities in different physical and socio-economic and institutional environments need to be thoroughly examined. Another important question is whether water productivity improvement really leads to water saving in agriculture or farmers use the saved water for growing more crops.
The network colleagues can contribute from their wealth of knowledge and experience working on the subject, the special insights, and empirical evidences available from different parts of India and abroad to enrich the topic.
What kind of technological, institutional and policy changes are required to enable water productivity improvement in agriculture that actually lead to water saving and that reduce the above mentioned negative effects on society? |
