Thewheat and rice production of indo gangetic plain
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RICE-WHEAT CROPPING SYSTEMS IN THE INDO-GANGETIC PLAINS: ISSUES OF WATER PRODUCTIVITY IN RELATION TO NEW RESOURCE CONSERVING TECHNOLOGIES.
Peter R. Hobbs and Raj K. Gupta
Abstract
The rice-wheat cropping system is found on 13.5 million hectares in South Asia and is one of the most important cropping patterns for food self security in the region. This system is found in the fertile, hot semiarid to hot sub-humid regions of the Indus and Gangetic alluvial plains of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Irrigation is commonly used to stabilize the productivity of this system using surface canal and sub-soil tubewell water. Area and yield growth has been responsible for continued production growth for these cereals over the past 30 years and has matched population growth and demand for food. This growth over the past 30 years was based on key inputs like variety, fertilizer and irrigation with most of the investment from the public sector. Future growth required to meet population growth will be close to 2.5% per year and must come from yield rather than area growth since the latter will decline as urbanization and industries spread to prime agricultural land. Competition for water will be a major challenge for agriculture and it is imperative that this scarce resource is used efficiently. This paper describes various resource conserving technologies that are being promoted by the rice-wheat consortium (one of 7 CGIAR eco-regional initiatives) to attain the goal of raising productivity in the region and meeting food security needs while at the same time efficiently using natural resources, including water, providing environmental benefits and improving the rural livelihoods of farmers and helping to alleviate poverty. This post green revolution technology will depend on farmer adoption and investment. Increasing and improving stakeholder participation in experimentation and fine-tuning of the technology will be a key to success