Farmers in dilemma, as dry spell over Bihar shows no sign of withdrawal
According to reports by IMD, Bihar has been witnessing deficiency of rainfall from the past seven years with an increasing number of dry days. 1. The abnormal pattern of rainfall may affect the agrarian economy of the state adversely as agriculture generates nearly 24.84% of the State Domestic Product2. As water remains one of the limiting factors in the agriculture sector of the state, efforts should be made to protect these resources by optimizing water use and minimizing non-point source pollution of groundwater. Many policies and programs have been implemented globally by the government and other policy-making agencies. Prime Minister Krishi Sinchayee Yojana, is an initiative by the Indian Government formulated with the vision of extending the coverage of irrigation and improving water use efficiency but the discernible results are sparse3. Inability to obtain the site-specific variation of agro-hydrological parameters remains the biggest limitation in practicing precision irrigation and thereby is the biggest hurdle in achieving food security.
Calculating irrigation requirement of the soil types spatiotemporally would be advantageous to manage the available water resources. Proper usage of water can increase yield and crop health. Farmers should be able to quantify the optimum water required for the crop in near real-time so that any deficiency can be rectified before the situation gets worse. In India, as the landholdings are below 2 hectares and the sizes of the fields are small, high-resolution data is required to monitor these factors field-wise. Irrigation requirement varies with time and hence near real-time monitoring of the soil moisture, soil type and other agro-hydrological parameters such as evapotranspiration, rainfall, vegetation index etc would help to determine the amount of irrigation required at various seasons. This data would be used by the government and decision making agencies to effectively manage water resources and optimize their use.
Satyukt Analytics has developed an innovative algorithm that models high-resolution agro-hydrological variables and can predict the optimal amount of water required for each crop based on the soil type and other parameters in near real time.
