Water Users Association and Irrigation Management - Institute for ...

of a water intensive crop. The excessive watering requirement for sugarcane percolates
underground and the seepage may extend laterally. This prevents the viable cultivation of
irrigated dry crops in the neighboring field. Hence, the association tries to prevent
independent decisions of the farmers regarding choice of crops.
The analysis so far, reveals that there is a need for a regulation of the cropping pattern. The
arguments put forward by the farmers, that the soil gets addicted to paddy and it is not
possible to switch over to irrigated dry crops is understandable. Also growing of other
crops is not preferred by the farmers due to marketing and extension problems. While these
arguments may be reasonable they are not infallible. Hence the intervention has to be two
fold. First, conscious effort is required to wean farmers away from growing crops with high
water requirements in areas prone to salinity and waterlogging. The issue is how to
discourage farmers from growing water thirsty crops or how to encourage them to grow
irrigated dry crops. Farmer's decision to grow any crop is mainly based on risk, investment
and return criteria. Therefore, attempts to either encourage or discourage certain crops can
only succeed if the mechanisms to reduce the risks and investment costs are put in place or
minimum returns are assured.
Secondly, if farmers prefer to grow paddy, attention should be paid to improve irrigation
water management of paddy fields. Alternate Wetting and Drying (A WD) irrigation
technique 21 can be tried which has been proved successful in the paddy growing areas of
China. The newly emerging Madagascar system of paddy cultivation or System of Rice
Intensification should be introduced. It is a weII-established paddy cultivation method that
consumes only 2/3 as much water compared to the present normal practice, requires only 2
kgs/acre of seed, involve early transplantation of single seedlings, less use of chemical
fertilizers, and produces good yields. This technique is found to be successful in some of
the major irrigation projects in Andhra Pradesh (Jalaspandana, 2002) and is gaining
acceptance around the world. However, appropriate extension and practical demonstration
along with an active campaign is required.
" A WD technique allows rice fields to reach a very dry condition prior to receipt of further water and to store
more water after rainfall. Hence the utilization of rainfall is facihtated. lrngatlOn events are reduced greatly
and percolation and seepage losses from rice fields are lessened (Feng. 1998; Li, 1999).
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