Theme 7-11-A study on farmers’ crop management practices and opportunities for drought alleviation in rainfed lowland rice systems.

Abstract

Rainfed agriculture is characterized by uncertainty in amount, frequency and duration of rainfall. The farmers are well aware of these limitations and have, over the years, managed their cropping practices so as to minimize the yield losses. Field experiments and farmers’ survey were carried out in the rainfed lowland rice systems of Northwest Bangladesh, in order to understand the present farming practices and the opportunities for drought alleviation. It was evident from the study that the traditional transplanted rice technology has failed to alleviate the droughts that occur during the crop growth period. Rainfall probability analysis has shown that the water availability from rainfall is only about 78% in an average year and drops down to about 50% during the dry years. Opportunities for technological interventions for drought alleviation, like water harvesting through on-farm reservoirs and dry seeded rice, have been explored. Because of physical limitations, the water harvesting technology has been neither suitable nor acceptable to the farmers. But, the dry seeded rice has proved to be superior over the traditional transplanted rice in mitigating the droughts. If dry seeded, the water availability from rainfall is nearly 100% in an average year and nearly 90%, even in the dry years. The agronomic and socio-economic issues that affect the wider adoption of the dry seeding technology by the farmers need further research.