Contingency Crop Planning for 100 Districts in Peninsular India

Not AvailableIn-season monitoring of drought through monitoring of rainfall and progress in sowings is crucial for effective management of droughts and minimizing the adverse impacts on crop production. Early season drought due to delay in onset of monsoon is directly responsible for shortfalls in area sown under major crops compared to normal situation. Also, delay in onset often leads to poor inflows into reservoirs, water bodies or poor recharge of groundwater and contributes to delay in sowings. Contingency crop planning refers to making available a plan for providing alternate crop or cultivar choices in tune with the resource endowments of rainfall and soils in a given location. In rainfed areas, as a general rule, early sowing of crops with the onset of monsoon is the best-bet practice that gives higher realizable yield. Major crops affected due to monsoon delays are those that have a narrow sowing window and therefore cannot be taken up if the delay is beyond this cut-off date for sowing. Crops with wider sowing windows can still be taken up till the cut-off date without major reduction in crop yield and only the change warranted could be the choice of short duration cultivars. Beyond the sowing window, choice of alternate crops or cultivars depends on the farming situation, soil, rainfall and cropping pattern in the location and extent of delay in the onset of monsoon (2, 4, 6 and 8 weeks). Breaks in monsoon cause prolonged dry spells and are responsible for early, mid and terminal droughts. These aberrant situations often lead to poor crop performance and or total crop failure. While early season droughts have to be combated with operations like gap filling and re-sowing, mid and late season droughts have to be managed through crop, soil, nutrient management and moisture conservation measures. Drought also affects livestock/milk productivity due to shortage of fodder. Appropriate location-specific fodder production strategies go a long way in reducing the adverse impact on livestock which is the major source of livelihood in dryland areas.Not Availabl