Natural Resources Management in Semi-arid Regions Learning from Farm and Watershed Level Action Research of ICAR-ACIAR Collaborative Project

Abstract

Efficient and sustainable use of natural resources is necessary for economic development, especially in resource poor countries. More so in the agriculture dominated economies like India where two-thirds of the cropped area is dependent on rainfall without any protective irrigation facilities. These regions have long been the victims of neglect on the policy front. This neglect is mainly due to the concentration of public resources in the well-endowed regions for meeting the country’s food requirements through irrigation development and green revolution technologies, which are complementary. But it has been realised of late that the optimum productivity levels in these (wellendowed) regions are being reached and their potential in meeting future demand is limited. Moreover, further increases in area under irrigation are not only limited but also expensive. While the policy bias, resulting in intensive agricultural practices, has paid off in terms of meeting the country’s food demands in the short run, it proved to be unsustainable, economically as well as environmentally, in the long run. This coupled with the limited scope for expanding irrigation (through traditional methods of damming the rivers) has prompted the policy shift towards dryland agriculture