Every citizen who is concerned about water conservation are cursing farmers for
paddy cultivation, actually, it is not their fault they are speaking what they have
learned from the media, scientist or intellectuals, and politicians who share their
views on water conservation and cites paddy as the sole culprit for underground
water depletion. The fact is that paddy is not the main culprit for water depletion
rather onus of this lies in higher cropping intensity in the state. As per official
data from the department of agriculture, the cropping intensity in the state is
186%. An actually cursory look at the cropping pattern and area under fodder,
vegetables, sugarcane, and orchards brings it to 230 to 240 percent.
Now let us understand the water requirement of different crops. The actual water
used by each crop is its evapotranspiration (ET) but to provide that water the
irrigation requirement exceeds the ET because some water is lost in Leaching
depending upon the method of irrigation. In the case of paddy, the irrigation water
requirement varies from 160 to 180 cm, but the actual ET is 73 cm which means
excess water over and above 73 cm leached down into the soil. The leaching is
an unsaturated flow which is why the general public cannot understand and count
the total irrigation requirement as water lost for raising paddy crops.
Evapotranspiration (ET) for various crops is Paddy 73 cm, Sugarcane 180 cm,
Cotton 65 cm, Maize 60 cm, Groundnut 50 cm, Wheat 50 cm, Grams 40 cm,
Mustard 35 cm. The basic thing is that difference between paddy and white gold
(cotton) is just 8 cm, but for the last few years as well as the current year white
gold has always burned the farmer’s fingers. The main advocacy of Scientists is
for sugarcane which has 180 cm of ET of course it is spread over 10-11 months.
The Punjab government this year while trying to diversify paddy and wheat, put
the wrong foot forward by announcing the moong procurement policy in the
month of April 2022 thus promoting summer moong/sathi moongi rather than the
monsoon moong. Thus further enhancing water consumption.
The corrective actions which require the immediate attention of the government
is
Cultivation of PUSA 44 and other long-duration paddy needs to be banned.
The shorter duration varieties like PR-126 and other new varieties should
be promoted to a maximum extent for next year. In order to do so, we need
to multiply seeds of short-duration varieties during the current season
because there was a shortage of seeds during this season. What govt needs
to plan is that those farmers who have a standing crop of PR-126, should be
contacted and a thorough rouging of off-type plants needs to be done. The
produce of such fields can get tested from the seed testing laboratory and
can be sold as Truthfully Labelled (TL) seed for next year’s crop.
The other new varieties of shorter duration in the pipeline may be grown
in the south during the Rabi season to make them available as early as possible.
The Basmati should be promoted to the extent of assessing the demand of
basmati importing countries. Their quality standards and demand need to
be thoroughly studied and separate package practices should be prepared
to guide farmers accordingly. The things like the midway ban on pesticides
should be planned well ahead.
The biggest problem may occur due to the large-scale introduction of short-duration paddy varieties and the promotion of Basmati. The vacant land
will be there during the peak summer season (mid of April to 1
st week of
July). This may tempt farmers to go in for cultivation of a third crop may
be summer moong or fodder for silage. It will be a drain of groundwater.
Thus agronomists need to develop cultural practices such as mulching/
cultivation on ridges etc so that water use efficiency can be improved, this
needs further research.
Canal water needs proper utilization. The most of doaba area and even the
villages around industrial town Ludhiana have stopped canal irrigation and
have cultivated the land which was under irrigation channels at one time.
This needs to be checked.
Another major point to ponder upon is why irrigation minors receive half
the water. The answer lies in freebies. Since the discontinuation of the
canal revenue charges. The repair work for these minors was not done
regularly due to a lack of funds. That is why less water is released so that it
does not create a breach in the minor channel. In case there is rain, farmers
plug outlets or when water is not required in fields this is a common
practice. Secondly, the small farmers, whose canal water turn is small in
terms of time hardly bother about the canal water especially if their turn is
during the night. The third reason is that if farmers’ underground water is
number 1 in quality they also do not use canal water. Almost the entire
malwa region has 2nd-grade underground water, hence requires canal water
to mitigate the ill effects of 2nd-grade water and increase the yield. If they
get the full quantity of canal water hardly there will be a requirement left for
underground water during the winter season.
To overcome the above problems, the government needs to plan water
recharging well along the water outlets so that the unutilized canal water in
case of rain or during night time recharges the underground water rather
than wasting it. This will lead to a stoppage of breaches that occur in canal
minors. If the canal minor breaches first the farmer’s crop is damaged, the
second government incurs money on repair work, and the third government
pays compensation to farmers. If compensation is delayed that leads to
agitation by farmers.
These are some of the suggestions if it suits policymakers and the state
the government may take appropriate action.
Dr Amanpreet Singh Brar
Mob No: 9653790000