Bidar Farmer's Successful Fight Against Drought

[JANASENA]

 

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Ravindra Shivajirao Patil in his tomato field at Honnikeri villagein Bidar district. Photo: Gopichand T.

 

 

Clever water management practices have helped a young farmer from Honnikeri village cultivate vegetables and spices when the district is suffering from a debilitating drought.

 

Ravindra Shivajirao Patil has been earning between Rs. 8 lakh and Rs. 10 lakh an acre every year, thanks to farsighted water management.

 

Having levelled fields to a gradient that directs all rainwater into a stream that runs through his farm, he has built two check dams at the two ends of the stream to impound water. He has created bunds and canals that feed the open well, and pits that recharge the borewell. Drip irrigation tubes wet every inch of his 20-acre farm. He carefully chooses crops that have stable prices and demand less water.

 

“I have reached a stage where half of my crops need zero maintenance,” says the 35-year-old farmer.

 

Behind this success is a story of untiring work. He inherited a patch of land that “looked like an undulating desert” in 1999. He was just in his teens then and did not know what to do with it. He grew sugarcane, only to find it did not fetch much.

 

Then a friend told him about ginger. The cash crop brought good returns on just one acre of land and he decided to expand it. “For that, I had to level my land. But it demanded hard work as the mounds had to be razed and aligned to the slopes,” says Mr. Patil.

 

I took a loan from the district cooperative bank to buy a tractor and began levelling the land. I worked by myself for a few months to remove the rocks and bring up the mud. Silt from the nearby stream was spread over the first four acres.

 

Work on the next seven acres was even better planned for growing ginger. “We dug a huge cube with a 6 ft depth, 60-m length and 500 m in width. It was filled with boulders, pebbles and soft soil, to see that extra water is drained off. This water in turn runs into the stream. This water cycle has improved productivity and kept the soil wet for months, he says.

 

Mr. Patil is working on building a two-acre farm pond before summer.

 

Work on bunding and channelling the upper drainage area has started. “I will make sure that not a drop of rain water leaves my field, he says.

 

He plans to connect a bio-digester to the water tank so that the slurry flows through the drip irrigation tubes. This should start working before summer, he said. “I am concerned about drought. But, I am not worried. I am prepared for it,” he says.