Day 13 – Q 1.What are drought resilient farming techniques? Discuss. Assess their suitability for drought affected regions of India. 

1. What are drought resilient farming techniques? Discuss. Assess their suitability for drought affected regions of India. 

सूखा रोधी कृषि तकनीक क्या हैं? चर्चा करें। भारत के सूखा प्रभावित क्षेत्रों के लिए उनकी उपयुक्तता का आकलन करें।

Introduction

Drought is considered as a deficiency in rainfall/ precipitation over an extended period, usually a season or more, resulting in water shortage causing adverse impacts on vegetation, animals and people. 

Body

Dry farming is the profitable production of groups, without irrigation, of land with a low average or highly variable rainfall.

Different drought farming techniques:

• Bunding: the first essential step in dry farming is bunding. The land is surveyed and level contours determined every hundred feet.
• Strip cropping: strip cropping is a technique that serves to control erosion and increase water absorption thereby maintaining soil fertility and plant response
• Stubble mulching: it aims at disrupting the soil drying process by protecting the soil surface at all times, either with a growing crop or with crop residues left on the surface during fallows.
• Stubble mulching: it aims at disrupting the soil drying process by protecting the soil surface at all times, either with a growing crop or with crop residues left on the surface during fallows.
• Dirt mulching: it aims at disrupting the soil drying process with tillage techniques that separate the upper layer of the soil from the lower layers, making the soil moisture film discontinuous.
• Intertillage: Crops sown in rows can take advantage of intertillage practices. This conserves moisture by the formation of dirt mulch.
• Inter-cropping: it is growing two or more crops simultaneously on the same field in a definite pattern. The crops are selected such that their nutrient requirements are different. This ensures maximum utilisation of the nutrients supplied, and also prevents pests and diseases from spreading to all the plants belonging to one crop in a field.
• Crop and variety selection: Short-stemmed varieties with limited leaf surface minimize transpiration, deep, prolific root systems enhance moisture utilization should be chosen. Quick-maturing varieties are important in order that the crop may develop prior to the hottest and driest part of the year.
• Drought tolerant crops: millets are high resistant to drought such cowpea, foxtail, maize, sorghum, bajra , ragi, can be grown along with some type of oil seeds.

Issues:

• About 42% of India’s land area is facing drought, with 6% exceptionally dry–four times according to drought early warning system. Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, parts of the North-East, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Telangana are the worst hit. These states are home to 500 million people, almost 40% of the country’s population.
• Failed monsoon in recent years. The North-East monsoon, also known as ‘post-monsoon rainfall’ (October-December) that provides 10-20% of India’s rainfall, was deficient by 44% in 2018.
• About 6% of the land area of the country is currently in the Exceptionally Dry category, which is nearly four times the 1.6% area at the same time last year.

Drought farming techniques in various places:

• The Indian hot arid zone covers an area of 31.7 m ha. (12% of country’s total geographical area) in states viz., Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and 7.03 m ha of cold arid zone in state of Jammu and Kashmir.
• In Rajasthan, in order to save water from evaporation and conserve water, plasticulture as a technique is used. The main crops grown are barley, wheat, ground nut, cotton, mustard and all type of millets. 
• Dryland agriculture is important for the economy as most of the coarse grain crops, pulses, oilseeds, and raw cotton are grown on these lands. One hundred and twenty-eight districts in India have been recognized as dryland farming areas. Of these, 91 districts are spread in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. 
• Several districts have started taking up organic farming in order to conserve water and soil, HYV crops needs more water and some districts have moved towards millets farming replacing Paddy. In Maharashtra main crops grown are wheat, jowar, pulses, bajra, cotton, oilseeds, turmeric and tobacco.

Note: Only a few techniques are mentioned here, in exam 3-4 techniques along with the regions where they are practiced will make it a complete answer. 

Conclusion:

Dry farming technique is widely used in Israel. Israel is the example for the world in optimising the use of water in general and agriculture in particular. India has openly embraced Israel for this. Micro Irrigation Incubated in Israel and gradually spread worldwide, micro irrigation has proven to be a technology which has the potential to change the face of Indian agriculture.