Water Harvesting for Agriculture

How they pulled their farm back from the brink

"Trying to measure the success of water harvesting only with increased water level is not fair. The vegetation improves, so does the soil moisture. Shree Padre reports on an arecanut farming family's success.

26 January 2010 - 'We can confidently say that all these improvements are due to rain harvesting', hails Sripathi Bhat Kadakoli, an areca farmer from near Sirsi in Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka. 'The decline seven years ago was inexplicable, and so is the development now.'

Just above their paddy fields is a small earthen tank filled with water. The seepage from this tank flows to the paddy fields situated below. 'This year, the rainfall is less', points out Sripathi, 'But for the tank, our paddy field would have been scorched.'

The rain pit in 2002. Pic: Shree Padre.

Five years ago, when I visited this farm, this tank was a small rain pit holding about thousand litres of water. Today, it is a tank that never dries.

Topography of the farm is very ideal for rain harvesting. All three sides are hills that slope down to this farm. The hills around belong to forest lands. But the canopy is not dense. Elder brother Diwakar Bhat and Sripathy have been picking up lessons of rain water harvesting one by one.

With an unbelievably low cost, they have succeeded in a big way.

Recharge from top

It is this upgradation of the rain pit into a tank that Sripathi had termed as inexplicable. 'The magician of this magic is there in uphill', he points to the forest area and leads us there.

In the initial years, the rain pit used to go dry by December. Due to water scarcity, a half acre field wasn't cultivated. Yield in the rest of are too wasn't satisfactory.

Instead of wasting the excavated soil from the pit, Bhat has cleverly raised a bund in the forest area. This has created a percolation pond that can hold about twenty five thousand litres.

From the tank, the percolation pond is about 50 metres away and on higher elevation. In between the two, there was a trench, dug to demarcate their land from the forest land. Both ends of this trench were plugged (blocked at a few places with earthen wall), to prevent runoff, thus making it into another groundwater recharge structure.

In the initial years, the rain pit used to go dry by December. Due to water scarcity, a half acre field wasn't cultivated. Yield in the rest of are too wasn't satisfactory.

The rain pit converted into a live tank now. Pic: Shree Padre.

The 'forest' started checking a considerable amount of run-off. This resulted in continuous seepage. The rain pit started retaining water till March,April. It started attracting wild animals like peacock, deer etc., because in the peak of summer, no water is available even in the nearby forest area.

Since a couple of years, the pit has completely turned into a live tank. Once this happened, it was widened to hold more water. Today just seven feet below the land level, there is good water. During last two years, they could give protective irrigation to the paddy by opening the outlet pipe. This year, according to Sripathi, they would be able to manage without openly flowing the tank water.

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