Impact of Micro Irrigation Technology, A Geographical Analysis of Parner Tehsil of Ahmednagar District (M.S.)

Agriculture is the base of all economic activities in the world. Indian agriculture has gone through tremendous changes via physical, socio-economic and technological factors. Water is one of the most critical inputs for agriculture; however, the share of water availability to the agriculture sector is declining at an alarming rate due to its ever-increasing demand for the energy, industry and domestic purposes. Much of the available irrigation water in India is applied through the conventional surface irrigation methods, which involve huge conveyance and distribution losses resulting in low overall irrigation efficiencies (35-40%). The poor irrigation efficiency of these systems not only reduce the anticipated outcomes from investments in the water resources, but also create environmental problems, like, lowering of water table due to over-exploitation of sub-surface water resources, water-logging and soil salinity, thereby adversely affecting the crop yields. On the other hand, the situation of cropping under irrigated and rain fed conditions is quite decimal. There is a decimal chance of further enhancement to the area under irrigation which calls for improving the water use efficiency of the available water resources which can be accomplished through the proven water saving technologies such as micro irrigation systems. The term micro irrigation describes irrigation systems that deliver water through small devices directly in the plant root zone at prescribed rate at regular interval of time. Micro-irrigation (MI) methods have been found to have significant water saving and crop productivity benefits. Studies have claimed water saving of 40 – 80 percent and productivity gains up to 100 percent. (Raina et al 1999: 2013 Sivanappan 1994; Palanisami et al. 2011). Present paper analyses the importance and key role in agriculture sector in Parner tehsil. Parner town is located to the west of Ahmednagar city while the tehsil of the same name is located in the western part of Ahmednagar district between 180 49’40’’N to 19021’13’’N Latitude and 740 10’22’’E to 74038’34’’E Longitude. Parner tehsil is a drought prone tehsil of Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra state. Farmers of Parner tehsil are not getting sufficient returns from their farms naturally, a drought condition occurs frequently in the study area. Total geographical area of study area is 186792 hectares. Barren land is 12098 hectares and 66956 hectares is NSA. Irrigated area is 53489 hectares. After analysing the primary and secondary data, we found that before introduction of MI irrigated area was 51861 hectares. After MI, it becomes 53489 hectares. We also found the change in cropping pattern, from food grains to cash crops like onion, fruits and vegetables etc. Area under micro irrigation increased, it is increased nearly about 10 percent to total irrigated area. The change also observed in increasing in the agricultural production especially in horticultural crops. It is also noticed that decreasing current, fallow and barren land especially in Supa, Parner, Nighoj and Takali Dhokeshwar mandal. Certain increase in income of the farmers of the tehsil due to micro irrigation have been observed.