The Water Resource Management in Sugarcane Farming: A Case of Solapur District (M.S.)

Abstract: Agriculture has been and will continue to be the life line of Indian economy. Irrigation plays an important role in Indian agriculture Agro-climatically, the entire Solapur district comes under the rain shadow area. Rainfall is uncertain and scanty. Drought is a recurrent phenomenon in Solapur District where drought conditions are prevailing consistently over many years serve stress to local economy as well as agriculture. Drip method of irrigation helps to reduce the over-exploitation of groundwater that partly occurs because of inefficient use of water under surface method of irrigation. Environmental problems associated with the surface method of irrigation like water logging and salinity are also completely absent under drip method of irrigation For present study Solapur district is selected purposively. For the purpose of the study, both primary and secondary information was collected from different sources. Study shows that Solapur district as a whole has 44.55 percent area of sugarcane under application of drip irrigation. the high area under drip irrigation (above 53 %) of Sugarcane is found in Sangola, Barshi and Mohol tahsils. Whereas it is low in Malshiras, Pandharpur, Karmala, Madha and Akkalkot tahsils i.e. below 44 percent