Evolving Watershed Clusters into Drought-Proof, Climate-Resilient Areas: An Impact Evaluation Study in Maharashtra, India

Watershed development helps reduce farmers vulnerability to droughts and increase their incomes by rehabilitating the productive capacity of the land through water and soil conservation techniques. We estimate the impact of India s largest watershed development program called Integrated Watershed Management Program (IWMP) in four of the most drought affected districts of Maharashtra, India. We collected data from a random sample of 800 farmers in the four districts. Watershed programs may not show any impact on crop area or yields in years of normal of high rainfall. We, therefore, collected recall data on cropped area and yields for the last 4 years from our respondents. Our analysis shows that cotton yields were 11-32 percent higher and soybean yields were 12-25% higher for farmers whose land received watershed treatment. Four years recall data on crop area and yield, also allows us to look at the effect of IWMP on resilience of agriculture to droughts. We find that drought led to 30-40% yield loss in soybean and cotton compared to the yield in a normal year. However, watershed treatment reduced the yield loss due to drought by more than 30 percent. Acknowledgement : The authors would like to thank the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security for its generous financial support of research that led to this paper. We also thank the Indian Council of Agricultural Research for providing partial research funding.