The Hindu Business Line : Water harvesting network mooted for rainfed agriculture

Coimbatore, June 27 The international symposium on water harvesting has come out with a suggestion to set up water harvesting network for rainfed agriculture with the object of creating information exchange, enhancing public awareness, influencing policies and capacity building in water harvesting.

The symposium’s suggestions contained in the form of a ‘Coimbatore declaration’ on ‘water harvesting for sustainable agricultural development in the drylands and rainfed areas’ released at the end of its three days of deliberations here has also called for short- and medium-term perspective plans on water conservation for dry land agriculture taking into account the ongoing national and State level programmes and their implementation through pilot projects in collaboration with State institutions.

The declaration has also wanted the region specific, small and marginal farmer-centric multiple water use models and farming systems to be developed for enhancing rainwater productivity. The indigenous techniques on rainwater harvesting already available in several regions needed to be relooked and re-evaluated for their adoptability in similar agro climatic regions. Among its other recommendations and suggestions for holistic development of water harvesting, the symposium wanted policy intervention in operationalising of methodologies for supplemental irrigation in rainfed areas, subsidy for farm implements used for moisture conservation in dryland farming and so on.

To achieve standardisation and streamlining the water harvesting tools, a separate organisation at State-level be created and it can also provide training for the rainwater harvest project implementation programmes. The creation of village resources centres which will also serve as data base centres on rainwater harvesting can create awareness among farmers on rainwater conservation technology.

Among those who attended the symposium were the Tamil Nadu Agriculture Minister, Mr Veerapandi S. Arumugam, and the Vice-Chancellor of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Dr C. Ramasamy.

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