E-Paper
A confident measure to save water
After many shallow results, comes a new deep effort to save groundwater. Years of seminars, meetings, and Kisan Melas in rabi and kharif seasons making little impact, the agriculture department is now selling the tensiometer device to farmers in 12,885 villages across the state to help them irrigate paddy and basmati only when required.
After many shallow results, comes a new deep effort to save groundwater. Years of seminars, meetings, and Kisan Melas in rabi and kharif seasons making little impact, the agriculture department is now selling the tensiometer device to farmers in 12,885 villages across the state to help them irrigate paddy and basmati only when required.
"The tool costs only Rs 330," said director of agriculture Mangal Singh Sandhu, "and farmers can get it from Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana." Every year, the state requires 43-lakh hectare meters of water to grow paddy, but can arrange only 30-lakh ha-m. "It draws the 13-lakh ha-m excess water it needs from the ground," said Sandhu.
"We hope farmers adopt the new technology that will help them irrigate their fields only when required. It can save us up to 30% groundwater without impacting the yield." With a geographical area of 5.036 million hectares, Punjab is only 0.33% of the world's land and 1.6% of India's ground. "In the past few decades, it has contributed 45, 55 and 24% of rice, wheat, and cotton, respectively, to the Central pool," " said the director of agriculture.
"This used up nearly 80% of its water resources, for though the state's cropped area is 86%, its cropping intensity is 189%." Punjab's 27% land is irrigated with the help of canals and the rest using more than 13-lakh tube-wells. Demonstrating tensiometer technology to farmers at Rode village of Bagbapurana block in Moga district on Tuesday, agriculture development officer Jaswinder Singh Brar said it helped farmers right-schedule the irrigation of paddy and basmati.
Satwinder Singh and Pandit Som Nath, progressive farmers of Rode, have found the instrument most useful when water requirement is high and any stress due to its shortage can damage the crop potential. "Farmers can save up to 30% of irrigation water without impacting the yield," said Satwinder Singh. "Scientists, researchers, extension workers, and farmers should work together to save irrigation water," said Nath.
