Paper short abstract:

Diversifying crop portfolio to include horticulture in the mix, is a strategy promoted to enhance farm income and build climate resilience among dryland farmers. The study analyses the interaction between farm incomes and rising cost of irrigation, on groundwater management in watershed villages.

Paper long abstract:

Dryland agricultural regions constitute nearly two-thirds of the total cultivated land in India. These regions contribute to 40% of food production, are home to 40% of the rural poor and are characterised by a very high share of smallholding farmers (60% have less than 2.5 acres of land). The farming communities here are increasingly vulnerable to climate risks, specifically to high volatility in seasonal rainfall. A key development action in building climate-resilient agricultural livelihood is to enable farmers to include a high-value horticultural crop in their portfolio. To this end, irrigation potential is built by implementing watershed development projects, encouraging private ownership of wells, adopting farm-level irrigation efficient technologies, and following a water budget prepared at the community level. Data from the field (a sample of five villages) suggests that though the gross farm incomes in the village did increase, the cost of irrigation skyrocketed, water imports from nearby regions increased, and the community-level water management tools such as the water budget are less relevant/effective to the groundwater management needs. Therefore, the central objective of this study is to understand the new constructs of sustainability emerging from the changing scenarios in agricultural development. To articulate the emerging phenomenon, we empirically analyse scale neutrality in horticultural farming (stochastic frontier analysis) and trace the policy incentives shaping agricultural development and groundwater regulation in Maharashtra.