Anik Bhaduri, Upali Amarasinghe, Tushaar Shah Future of Agriculture and Irrigation

Outline Analysis of past agriculture and irrigation scenarios. Factors affecting cropped area and yield. Projections of irrigated area and production of foodgrains in future.

Achievements The growth of food production has surpassed the growth of population. -- Average per capita food availability increased from 167kg per year during to 174 kg per year during Increase in irrigated area- During , 40% of the net cropped area was irrigated.In 1990 it was 33%.

Concerns Agricultural growth rate has declined. Decline in the growth rate of foodgrain production. Over exploitation of groundwater. Imbalanced use of fertilizer

Challenge Would India be able to increase the foodgrain production in the coming years with the net-cropped area remaining same?

Policy makers think…….. Much of the additional food demand in the future will have to be met through productivity enhancement and increased cropping intensity.

So what we need ? Reaching towards the goal of achieving high yield and high cropping intensity requires a crucial role of irrigation and other factors.

Irrigated area

Factors determining irrigation intensity Agricultural dependent population is increasing even though the proportion of agricultural population to total population is decreasing- we examine the Boserupian hypothesis which states that increase in population will increase the agricultural resource use intensification. Groundwater Irrigation-Over the past 15 years, increase in irrigated area has mainly taken place from groundwater source. Hypothesis-Increase in irrigation endowment increases reliability in water supply and facilitates in increasing irrigation intensity

Factors determining irrigation intensity Mechanization-with growing urbanization and out migration, mechanization will play a vital role in achieving higher agricultural production in irrigated area.- Hypothesis- Irrigation reduces farmers risk in adopting irrigation and facilitates in increasing irrigation intensity.

Net Irrigated area and source

Decadal Growth rate

Regression Results: Irrigation intensity(IRI)

Projections From the regression results, we have determined the marginal effect of the factors influencing irrigation intensity. The growth rates of agricultural dependent population per hectare of cropped area and proportional irrigated area are determined using a quadratic time trend from the last decade. Then using the regression results explaining the irrigation intensity, we project the latter.

Projection

Food production:

Regression explaining yield

Projections From the regression results, we have determined the marginal effect of the factors influencing yield of foodgrains. The growth rates of proportional irrigated area, usage of fertilizer per hectare of cropped area and gross cropped area are determined using a quadratic time trend from the last decade. Then using the regression results explaining the yield, we project the latter.

Projections

Projection