MULTI - OBJECTIVE CROP PLANNING FOR BARNA IRRIGATION PROJECT MADHYA PRADESH

Abstract

Land and water are the two most precious gifts of nature to humankind. Out of approximately 1360 million cubic km of total water on earth only 0.126 million cubic km of water is available as fresh water. Also land, what was available a million years ago, is not the same, as fertile land suitable for production is reducing day-by-day. Person, land ratio in India will be 0.33 hact./person by the end of 2000 and present food grain production is about 1.70 tons/hact. Since, horizontal expansion of cultivable land is not possible so vertical increase in per unit production of food seems the only way to increase food production. In order to meet the demand of increased agricultural production, optimal use of land and water resources is the only way to get maximum production per unit of water, and per unit of land area. The role of systems approach for planning and operation needs no emphasis. For a basin whose water resources potential and land are rather limited, role of water resources and agriculture engineer becomes vital in order to manage land and available water resources in the best possible manner. The main aim of the present study, for the command area of Barna irrigation project of Madhya Pradesh having gross command area of 0.74 lakh hact. is to arrive at an optimal cropping pattern for the optimal use of land and water resources giving maximum return, to meet food, nutritional and production requirement of the growing population for the year 2005 AD. 13 crops under Kharif and Rabi are considered for allocation of land and water against present 3 crops. Linear programming model and goal programming models are formulated to find out the optimal allocation of land and water for various crops. Water (Surface and ground water) availability, land availability, minimum area for each crop, calorie and protein requirement are considered as constraints. Existing cropping pattern gives net return of Rs. 54.70 crores, total protein 30.40 million kg and calories 44300 crores cal. units. Whereas, the proposed optimal plan gives rise to net return of Rs. 171.50 crores, total protein 30.45 million kg and total calories 84000 crores, cal. units, total calories, utilizing lesser canal water. Therefore, the proposed cropping pattern giving maximum net returns, nutritional values and food production is suggested to be adopted for the area under study. (