Farmers Increasing Food Production through adaptation to Floods.
Ranjan Panda
Dear Co-sailors,
As we prepare for the State Level Consultation on Flood Management to be held on 23rd October at Bhubaneswar, we are receiving a lot of suggestions and inputs from friends from around the nation and even outside. With this mail we share with you a note from a media volunteer that we think holds relevance for our state as well.
We are sure you will find this useful reading.
Thanks and regards,
Ranjan Panda
Convenor, Water Initiatives Odisha
On behalf of WIO, ODAF, OKAA and other friends who are helping us in this initiative.
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Farmers Increasing Food Production through Adaptation Mechanisms to Cope with Flooding and Salinity in the Ganges
"Reduce poverty and strengthen livelihood resilience through improved water governance and management in coastal areas of the Ganges basin” -Ganges Basin Development Challenge (BDC)
People living in the coastal areas of the Ganges River face large challenges in increasing food production and improving livelihoods in the face of climate change, yet farmers are showing that much can be accomplished, in spite of the apparently hostile living and farming conditions.
Two key factors threatening food security in the area are flooding and salinity. Flooding comes with devastating consequences; while the second, saline intrusion, can cause widespread crop damage, and contaminate groundwater supplies for both drinking and agricultural use.
During low river flows between November and May, saline water may penetrate as far as 270 km upstream, and affect an area of around 800,000 ha, causing some US$586 million in agricultural losses annually. The saline intrusion comes with an additional consequence of conflict - shrimp fishermen (mainly large scale) benefit from the brackish water brought on by saline intrusion, but rice farmers suffer as a consequence.
CPWF experience in the Mekong Delta has shown that these conflicts can be mitigated through the introduction of saline tolerant rice varieties, embedded within a broader saline management system that relies on sluice gates and predictive modeling.
For example, in the Chitolmari sub-district of Bangladesh, an area covered by the newly launched Ganges Basin Development Challenge (BDC), various farming system innovations have already been implemented by farmers, allowing households to adapt to increasingly high salinity levels in some seasons.
A few years ago, farmers in this region practiced only a single rice crop in the monsoon period; now they are cultivating various combinations of fish (shrimp and other fish) during the monsoon and producing rice (boro) in the winter/dry season. Instead of being kept fallow, farmers are using raised dikes (bands between the rice plots) for cultivation of vegetables (bitter gourd, cucumber, tomato, cabbage and others) by extending a trellis over the water. Bamboo and nylon cord are used to grow creeper vegetables, such as cucumbers and gourds. In the cooler dry season, dikes are being used to grow winter vegetables like tomato and cabbage, and by raising dykes high enough above the water, farmers are able to reduce the impacts of salinity on dyke soils. Growing volumes of vegetables in the region are stimulating trade and development of local collection markets, where urban buyers are able to connect with farm produce.
CGIAR-implemented programs, such as the WorldFish Center PRICE–GHER Project, CAARP Project and CSISA project and now the Ganges basin program of the CPWF Phase 2 are working with farmers to help identify, test and share such innovations.
These approaches show not only that the people living in this region can derive benefits but also that lessons can be shared more widely across the Ganges delta, as well as with other basins of the CGIAR Challenge Program for Water and Food. The Ganges Phase 2 research program will focus on reducing poverty and strengthening livelihood resilience through improved water governance and management, and intensified and diversified agricultural and aquaculture systems, in coastal areas of the Ganges basin. The Ganges Basin Development Challenge is among the six priority Basin Development Challenges under the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF).
By Yvonne Otineo
Ranjan K Panda
Water Initiatives Odisha: Fighting water woes, combating climate change... more than two decades now!
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Water Initiatives Odisha (WIO) is a state level coalition of civil society organisations, farmers, academia, media and other concerned, which has been working on water, environment and climate change issues in the state for more than two decades now.