In dry farming all the farmers grow similar crops which are drought resistant. These crops mature at the same time and the growers like to dispose off their products soon after the harvest. This results in a glut of products in the market and the situation is badly exploited by the grain traders and middlemen. Therefore, marketing becomes a serious problem in dry farming areas.
4. Selection or limited crops
Only drought resistant crops namely oilseeds, pulses and coarse grains like jowar, bajra, millets etc. can be grown in dryland areas. Thus, the farmers have to purchase other food grains and household commodities that unbalance their economic position.
5. Careful and judicious manurial scheduling
In case of irrigated farming the farmers are at a liberty to apply [manures and fertilizers according to their availability and facility but in case of dry farming they have to be very careful in fertilizer application. Due to lack of available moisture, broadcasting or top dressing becomes wasteful and meaningless. These can be applied ' by only deep placement and foliar spray for an improved crop production.
In this article, all the aspects of dry land farming including
problems of dry farming and recommendations for raising productivity
in dry farming have been fully discussed. This article is
prepared mainly to help people working for socio-economic
development of the rural poor farming classes: scheduled castes,
scheduled tribes and women.
6. Utilization of preserved moisture
Judicious and purposeful utilization of preserved moisture water depends upon soil type, plant type and other factors. The amount of available water to the plants depends upon the depth of plant roots, their proliferation and density. In case of limited moisture condition, the yield directly depends upon the rooting depth. The rooting depth can be desirably increased by mechanical manipulation of the soil. If the planting is very dense and all the plants have same kind of rooting then there will be a tough competition among roots for moisture and scarce moisture condition will result in the wilting of plants. Therefore, utilization of preserved moisture is an art in dry farming. The water collected in ponds or brooks may be used to give protective or life saving irrigation. The widely spaced crops can be intercropped with oilseeds or pulses for increasing the productivity of the land per unit area and per unit time. Therefore, the water. , collected during the rainy season need special technique and skill for its efficient utilization.
7. Quality or the produce
The quality of the produce from dry farming areas is often found to be inferior as the grains are not fully developed or they are not filled properly; often mixed with other crop seeds owing to mixed .cropping system prevalent in these areas and the fodder become more fibrous. All these factors reduce the market value of produce and the farmers do not get the profit of their labour and Investment.
IV. Work on Dry Farming in India
As it has already been stated, that crop production is highly risky in arid and semi-arid climates. In such conditions generally two types of agriculture is practised. One is crop production or arable farming and the other is mixed farming i.e. animal husbandry together with crop production and pasture management. But this type of agriculture holds true only in those countries where the population is limited and agricultural land is extensive such as Australia, South Africa and some states of the USA. In India, with high population and limited available land for agriculture, we have no other option than adopting arable farming.
The repeated and frequent crop failure in the past, resulting
in short food grain supply, attracted the attention of our
scientists and administration. Thus the scarcity of food grains
in India were made the subject of enquiry in the year 1880
and the first Famine Commission was appointed in the same
year. The commission after thorough study of the situation
recommended the establishment of protective irrigation projects
in South India and formation of department of agriculture
in all the states. But nothing could be done illll923 when
the first systematic and scientific approach to the dry farming
problem in India was made. Thus, as a beginning, Bombay research
scheme on dry farming was started in 1934 at Solapur and Bijapur
after the establishment of Indian Council of Agricultural
Research (ICAR) a. New Delhi in 1929. After some time the
work on dry farming wasi81so started in Punjab, Madras and
Hyderabad. Dry farming work in U.P. started in Jhansi and
Agra at dry farming centres established 1943-44 and 1948-50,
respectively.
Since then the work has been in progress. Crop
improvement brought out very promising strains during sixties
which received our interest in finding out ways and means
through which the crop production can be maximized in semi
-arid and periodically dry areas of the country. Keeping this
in view, the ICAR launched the All India Coordinated Research
Project for Dry Land Agriculture in 1970 which was in active
collaboration with government of Canada. The project started
with multi disciplinary research units at 23 coordinating
research centres located in various typical agro climatic
regions of India with
Hyderabad as headquarter. The project
started with the identification of the constraints responsible
for lower yields in different regions : and then to develop
a relevant location specific research program to solve production
constraints. Presently a joint team of senior scientists of
India and Canada is working at Hyderabad. To make the programs
more effective it is expanded to 16 agro-economic research
centres. These centres have been established with an obvious
objective of accelerating the conservation development and
efficient, long term use of basic resources of soil and water
for a self sustaining production. The main areas of investigations
of these centres are given below:
-Identification of different crops and selection of high yielding varieties for different agro-climatic zones of the country.
-Developing cropping sequences and cropping systems suitable for dry farming.
-Determining the optimal crop population and planting pattern.
-Evaluating tillage implements and practices for water intake and storage in the soil profile, establishment of better crop stand and control of weeds.
-Designing and developing animal drawn implements for speedy and efficient cultural operations.
-Evaluating use of surface mulches, both organic and inorganic for short term moisture conservation.
-Determining ideal fertilizer doses and improving fertilizer use efficiency.
-Testing new planting rnaterials for introduction/substitution after they have proved their superiority over existing ones.
-Harvesting and storing inevitable run off and recycling it as life saving or protective irrigation.
-Developing strategies for rneeting the challenges of an aberrant weather like skip or catch cropping etc.
Next :
Principal
Dry Farming Zones in India 