Irrigation

Sources

  • canals.
  • rivers
  • well
    • 1 well good enough for 2 acres as per manju of devanahaLLi.
  • borewell
    • If you get 3 inch water, good enough for 6 acres.
    • Can’t grow paddy etc.. But good for vegetables, corn etc..

Pumping

  • electric pump
  • picota/ ಏತ

Salination

Salinity from irrigation can occur over time wherever irrigation occurs.

Salinity in drylands can occur when the water table is between two and three metres from the surface of the soil. The salts from the groundwater are raised by capillary action to the surface of the soil. This is favored by land use practices allowing more rainwater to enter the aquifer than it could accommodate.

For example, the clearing of trees for agriculture is a major reason for dryland salinity in some areas, since deep rooting of trees has been replaced by shallow rooting of annual crops.

UP case

The problem of soil salinity and or sodicity is more prominent in the semi-arid tract of the Gangetic plain covering 1.37 m ha, reducing the productive capabilities of about 4.65% of the land surface in the state. The worst affected districts are Mainpuri, Etah, Etawah, Fatehpur, Aligarh, Farrukhabad, Kanpur, Unnao, Allahabad, Raebareli, Partapgarh, Sultanpur, Lucknow, Azamgarh, western parts of Ballia and Varanasi. Some saline patches in the districts of Mathura and Agra are also identified which are due to the high water table which is of mostly brackish in nature.

This degradation is mainly the manifestation of the human intervention with the nature. Many fertile productive lands mostly in command areas suffer from this problem chiefly because of sharp rise in water table resulting from marked disturbances in the hydrologic equilibrium under canal irrigation. As a result the crop yields have decreased significantly and the cropping pattern has shown a shift towards the relatively more tolerant crops. Such negative trends question the sustainability of irrigated agriculture into long term perspective and this is a matter of concern.