Integrated Water Management agronomical Practices
• To help 6300 canal-irrigated paddy farmers in 180 villages in of Raichur and Koppal districts to shift from a water-intensive flood irrigation regime to a rationale use of canal water through ICM (integrated crop management, comprising both NPM and SRI packages of practices, and through this save 179.4 billion litres of canal water).
• To advocate public policy to (a) influence command authorities to ensure the use of this water saving (equivalent to 11,751 ha of conventional cultivation crop acres) by farmers in tail-end villages, (b) to explore upstream water policies and its impact on lower distributaries; and (c) to explore how project learnings can be incorporated into command area practices (The potential water savings of the additional lands that will receive irrigation has not been calculated in the project’s water saving).
• To help 100% of small and marginal farmers in the 180 villages to access and repay Kisan credit of Rs 109 Crores over the project period.
• To reduce the impact of synthetic pesticides on the health of farmers, consumers, soils and tail-end and downstream rivers by extensioning NPM package of practices. 20% of NPM farmers will be further extensioned to undertake SRI package of practices in the third year, with this increasing to 50% of the total NPM area by the 5th year, leading to the promotion of further water savings and organic crop practices.