Managing farm risks by adopting Micro-Irrigation: Evidences from different crops

Indian farmers have been facing different kinds of risks while venturing into farming. Water scarcity during the period of crop cultivation often puts farmers at risks in harvesting increased productivity and realising assured income from crops cultivation. Although the coverage of irrigation has increased substantially over the years in India, the crops cultivated under conventional flood method of irrigation predominantly practised in Indian agriculture often face moisture stress due to monsoon failures and other reasons that affect productivity of crops leading to economic losses to farmers. Drip method of irrigation (DMI), a relatively new method of irrigation, is proved to be very useful in reducing the risk of farmers by increasing productivity even with reduced water availability. In this paper, an attempt is made to study as to what extent DMI can help reducing the risk of farmers especially on productivity and profitability by using data of 9 different crops cultivated in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. It is found that productivity and profits are significantly higher for all the selected crops cultivated under DMI than that of the same crops cultivated under FMI. The discounted cash flow technique employed to find out the viability of drip investment reveals that DMI is economically viable for all the crops even without availing government subsidy for the same.