Water Productivity Mapping of Major Indian Crops Report

Water Productivity Mapping of Major Indian Crops Report

Indian agriculture needs to stop being obsessed with the land productivity and instead start worrying about water productivity, says a report released by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD)

Productivity is a ratio between a unit of output and a unit of input.
The Water Productivity in modern agriculture aims to increase yield production per unit of water used, both under rainfed and irrigated conditions.

What is the need for change in the method?

The Indian agriculture uses almost 80% of all the country’s water resources, which are increasingly under stress, changing the objective of agriculture development to increasing productivity per unit of water, especially irrigation water, is crucial

Details

This report is part of a research project with Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), mapping a water atlas for ten major crops — rice, wheat, maize, red gram, chickpea, sugarcane, cotton, groundnut, rapeseed-mustard and potato. These together occupy more than 60% of the country’s gross cropped area.
The most stark differences between land and water productivity are seen in rice and sugarcane cultivation
Rice
Punjab reports the highest land productivity for rice, producing four tonnes per hectare. However, it only produces 0.22 kg of rice for every meter cube of irrigation water.
Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, on the other hand, produce 0.75 and 0.68 kg for the same amount of water.
However, low irrigation coverage results in low land productivity in these States. Jharkhand has only 3% of its land under irrigation.
Sugarcane
Tamil Nadu reports the highest land productivity, producing 105 tonnes per hectare. Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh also have high rates of land productivity.
However, all four States in the water-stressed sub-tropical belt have an irrigation water productivity of less than 5 kg/m3. In fact, an average of 40 rounds of irrigation are needed in Tamil Nadu.
In the Gangetic Plain States of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, on the other hand, need five and eight rounds of irrigation respectively.

Recommendations

The report recommends that cropping patterns be re-aligned to water availability, using both demand and supply side interventions.
With water and power subsidies skewing cropping patterns, it also recommends reform in these areas, with a shift from the price policy approach of heavily subsidizing inputs to an income policy approach of directly giving money farmers on per hectare basis.
Prices will then be determined by market forces.