It`s not irrigated agriculture

30/07/2007

Most definitions of 'rainfed' areas fail to distinguish between rainfed and irrigated agriculture. Agriculture scientists have explained rainfed areas from various perspectives. In the Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, S L Bapna called those areas rainfed which had less than 25 per cent of gross cropped area under irrigation and average annual rainfall of 500-1,500 mm (1981). N S Jodha, in an article 'Development Strategies for Rainfed Agriculture', endorsed this. K Subbarao had a different take. He said, a rainfed area was one which had less than 25 per cent of gross cropped area under irrigation and an average annual rainfall of less than 970 mm. Amita Shah and D C Shah in a research paper on Dryland farming under the changing source environment in Gujarat (1993) had defined rainfed areas as those with a percentage of gross cropped area under irrigation of less than 25 per cent and average rainfall of 400-750 mm.In a book entitled Technological change and regional differentiation in 1993, S K Thorat had defined those areas as rainfed where the percentage of gross cropped areas under irrigation was less than 10 per cent and average annual rainfall 375-750 mm. According to scientists associated with the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, those areas are rainfed which receive annual rainfall of 750-800 mm and have less than 0 per cent of irrigated land. The Union ministry of agriculture classifies areas as dryland which receive less than 750 mm of rainfall annually and have less than 30 per cent under irrigation (both surface and groundwater).

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