International organisation Solidaridad, and Hindustan Unilever Foundation, community development initiative of Hindustan Unilever, have joined hands for a ₹27-crore water efficiency project for commercial crops in Tamil Nadu and nine other States.
Shatadru Chattopadhyay, Managing Director of Solidaridad’s South and South East Asian operations, said here on Tuesday that the project would be a plug-in on its existing sustainable farming support programmes.
The project will cover some 38 districts across Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal.
The three-year crop production support project, which has been formally launched on Tuesday, will cover sugarcane, soya, tea and cotton farming on around 6.78 lakh hectres and aims to save 415 to 1,015 billion litres of water.
Chattopadhyay said water saved through introduction of efficient cropping methods would be used for diversified production. This being part of the existing crop-related programmes, a chain of corporate buyers, farmers’ organisations, other support organisation and NGOs would be involved in the project.
“Crops like sugarcane alone used an estimated 61 trillion litres of water in India during the 2012-13 season. The sustainable agriculture promoted by Solidaridad could assist farmers to produce more food, feed, fibre and fuel without making competing claims over the limited resources – agricultural land and water,” the official said.
Seventy-five per cent of the additional food needed over the next decade could be met by increasing productivity. Better water management could bridge the productivity gap – up to 80 per cent of what high-yield farmers get from comparable land, he added.
The collaborative nature of this project would see the engagement of multiple private players such as EID Parry, Rajshree Sugars, Ruchi Soya, Hidnustan Unilever and Coca Cola.