Relevance: GS-3: Major crops cropping patterns in various parts of the country, different types of irrigation and irrigation systems storage.

Key phrases: Farm pond, Water use, Agricultural sector, Groundwater, Cost-effective structures, Recharge points, Food security, Land-use efficiency, Farmers cultivate, Hydrology, Topography, Climate pattern, Community farm ponds.

Why in News?

• A bank-supported NGO initiative has transformed agriculture in the Hubli-Dharwad area by construted farm ponds.

Agriculture and water use in India:

• Agricultural sector employs nearly half of the workforce in India.
• Contribution to the GDP has been rising in recent years from 18.2 percent in 2014-15 to 18.8 percent in 2021-22 according to the Economic Survey 2021-22.
• 61 percent of the farmers practice rainfed farming with 55 percent of the crop area in India being rain dependent, while the rest is irrigated using tubewells, canals, wells, tanks, and other sources.
• Fifty percent of agriculture depends on groundwater in India with 39 million hectares of land irrigated by groundwater, 22 million by canals with about 100 million hectares being rainfed.
• Agriculture consumes around 80 percent of India’s available water and 90 percent of the total production includes water-guzzling varieties like sugarcane, wheat, and rice.

Benefits of farm ponds:

• Cost-effective structures:
  • cost-effective structures that transform rural livelihoods.
  • aid in superior water control through the harvesting not just of rainfall but also of surface run-off and subsurface flows.
• Recharge points:
  • Some of farm ponds functioned exclusively as recharge points, contributing to groundwater replenishment.
• Food security:
  • They also helped in providing supplemental irrigation in the kharif season and an enhanced irrigation coverage in rabi.
  • The yield of paddy, the most important crop in kharif, stabilised, thus contributing to greater food security.
• Farm ponds retain water for 8-10 months of the year; thus farmers could enhance cropping intensity and crop diversification within and across seasons. The area used to cultivate vegetables and other commercial crops also increased.
• Financially viable:
  • Some study indicated that the ponds were also a financially viable proposition, with a fairly high Internal Rate of Return, of about 19%, over 15 years
• They also support cultivation of water-intensive and more profitable commercial crops like papaya, beyond the traditional cotton, onion, etc.
• Minor investments:
  • With zero maintenance cost and no requirement of intensive technology, farm ponds can provide extra income to farmers not only through better crops but also through other methods like aquaculture and fishery in farm ponds.

Issues with Farm Ponds:

• In some areas the idea of a farm pond as an in-situ rainwater harvesting structure has taken a complete U-turn. Here, some of them are benefiting farmers at an individual level, but not contributing to water conservation and recharge.
• They are being used as intermediate storage points, accelerating groundwater depletion and increasing evaporation losses as the groundwater is brought to the surface and stored in relatively shallow structures.
• Some of farm ponds are being constructed without inlet and outlet provisions and their walls are raised above the ground level by only a few feet. They cannot arrest the excess run-off as there is no inlet, and therefore they cannot be used effectively for rainwater harvesting.
• Further, farmers line them at the bottom with plastic, restricting seepage and converting the ponds into intermediate storage points.
• Such farm ponds have an adverse impact on the water tables and accelerate water loss.
• The usual practice here is to lift water from a dug well and/or a borewell, store it in the pond and then draw it once again to irrigate the fields, often using micro-irrigation. While offering secure irrigation facility, this intensifies competition for extraction of groundwater from the aquifer, which is a common pool resource.

Making farm ponds sustainable:

These steps need to be undertaken to make farm ponds ecologically sustainable:

• Regulating borewells and the use of groundwater for farm ponds.
• Limiting the number of farm ponds and size in each village depending on hydrology, topography, climate patterns, population, etc. These provisions must be included in the scheme itself.
• Finding substitutes for plastic linings, like WOTR (Watershed Organisation Trust), Pune that experimented with 80 percent soil and 20 percent cement for coating, which reduced 50 percent cost and was found to be ecologically effective and sustainable.
• Using farm ponds for domestic use. This experiment was carried out in the Marathwada region successfully by WOTR.
• Community farm ponds were built with participation from the locals right from planning, implementation to maintenance thus, creating ownership amongst the beneficiaries. It also helped in reducing the number of ponds in the village.
• Covering pond surfaces to reduce evaporation. Aquaponics can be practised for reducing evaporation and providing supplementary income. And if possible pisciculture too.
• Farm ponds constructed with minimum surface area and greater depth can also reduce evaporation when temperature rises above 40 degrees.
• Provision of subsidy to small and marginalised farmers to avoid loss for diverting available land for farm ponds, hence reducing area under cultivation.
• Focus on micro-irrigation projects like drip and sprinkler irrigation which provide a higher rate of interest than large irrigation projects like the dams, canal irrigation, etc.
• Promotion of cottage industries like food processing, thus motivating farmers to cultivate different crops than water guzzlers. Cottage industries can be built with the help of SHGs and cooperatives thus further providing employment and income opportunities to the locals.

Way forward:

• Overall, farm ponds can act as effective harvesting structures and also yield healthy financial returns. But if they are promoted merely for on-farm storage of groundwater and canal water, they could accelerate, rather than reduce, the water crisis in the countryside.
• Assured irrigation created through farm ponds has led to some farmers in Bundelkhand even planning rearing of fish or taking a crop of singhaada (water chestnut) in their fields. There could also be scope to earn extra income from planting of fruit-bearing trees on the bunds. By enabling harvesting and conservation of rainwater, creating irrigation potential and providing a means of drought proofing, farm ponds have shown they can be a potential game-changer for even parched regions like Bundelkhand.

Source: The Hindu BL 

Mains Question:

Q. Discuss how can farm ponds transform livelihoods of the farmers in India. What steps need to be undertaken to make farm ponds ecologically sustainable?