FARM PONDS : A Climate Resilient Technology for Rainfed Agriculture

Not AvailableRainfall is a basic resource for all the forms of water in semi arid tropics of India. Though the annual average rainfall of the country is 1200 mm, it varies in both space and time affecting the availability of water for different sectors. India uses 80% of the available water in agriculture keeping the remaining 20% for drinking, industry and energy sectors. The growing population puts tremendous pressure on the water resources. The annual per capita water availability has decreased from 5000 m3 in 1950 to 1300 m3 in 2010 and projected to decrease further to below 1000 m3 by 2025 (MOWR,2011). Added to this, the country may face climate change in future predicting more frequent floods, droughts, extreme events of rainfall etc. with increased temperature (IPCC, 2007). The food grain production in India is contributed by irrigated and rainfed areas by 60% and 40% respectively. Irrigated areas have reached plateau in the yield but rainfed areas are considered to offer future scope for increasing food production. Rainfed area with 55% net cultivated area contribute 40% of food grains and support 60% of livestock population (NRAA,2011). Most of the pulse and oil seeds production (80%) comes from rainfed areas. Rainfed areas suffer from severe land degradation and poor socio economic base of farmers. Several management options are available at the farm scale to increase rainfall use efficiency. Some of these are management of crop residues to improve infiltration and reduce sediment levels, construction of farm ponds for collection of excess rainfall flowing from the farm area, crop rotations and soil amendments (Freebairn et al., 1986). Several researchers have shown that on-farm runoff collection into dugout farm ponds and supplemental irrigation can increase and stabilize the crop production (Krishna et al., 1987). There is an abundant scope and opportunity for harvesting excess runoff in the rainfed region in different states of the country (Wani, et al., 2003, Sharma et al, 2009). Government of India has introduced several schemes to improve the surface water availability in irrigated and rainfed areas for enhancing the productivity FARM PONDS 10 and ground water recharge. Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP) has been implemented successfully in most of the rainfed regions of the country with major objective of the stabilizing crop production by controlling soil erosion in arable and non-arable lands. Among several interventions, farm pond is the most important and promissing technology in the integrated water shed management program with other environmental benefits. Farm ponds would help the farmers for on farm water management by using stored water for tackling the drought or dryspells during the season which are common as given in Table1. Considering the need and the current emphasis on on-farm rain water harvesting for enhancing water productivity in rainfed regions by the Govt of India, the present technical bulletin on Farm Ponds: Planning, design and construction is brought out based on field experiences by CRIDA for the benefit of the implementing agencies working in IWMP, State Govt depts, NGO’s, SAU’s. The bulletin describes a practical approach for designing and construction of a farm pond.Not Availabl