India is an agricultural country. About seventy percent of its people depend on agriculture. Watering is essential for crops. Agriculture is not possible without water. We have to depend on rains for water for our fields, but we do not get rains throughout the year. India gets almost all of its rainfall during the rainy season from June to September. The rainfall is not uniform. Some parts get moderate rainfall & some parts are left without rainfall. The rainfall also varies from year to year. In some years we get heavy rainfall, while in some other we do not get sufficient rainfall.

India with 2.4% of the world’s total area has 16% of the world’s population but has only 4% of the total available fresh water. This clearly indicates the need for water resources development, conservation, and optimum use. Flood is a common type of irrigation that is used in agriculture. It irrigation is an ancient method of irrigating crops. It was likely the first form of irrigation used by humans as they began cultivating crops and is still one of the most commonly used methods of irrigation used today.

Flood irrigation is one of the oldest methods of irrigation. In this irrigation water is delivered to the field by the ditch, pipe, or some other means and simply flows over the ground through the crop. This type is also referred to as surface or furrow. Flood irrigation is pretty self-explanatory. Although flood irrigation is an effective method of irrigation it is certainly not efficient compared with other options. With flood irrigation, it is generally assumed that only half of the water applied actually ends up irrigating the crop. In this irrigation type, you literally flood the field with water and wait for it to absorb. The other half is lost to evaporation, runoff, infiltration of uncultivated areas, and transpiration through the leaves of weeds. This is a very commonly used type of irrigation, however, it does have severe downsides.

The biggest downside is the sheer amount of water used. As the name suggests, water used in flood irrigation is more or less “uncontrolled” and is applied in large amounts to massive areas. This irrigation is very labor-intensive, as water flow has to be monitored and water has to be directed to prevent wastage. In this irrigation leveling of land increases the cost of cultivation. This method is unsuitable for crops that are sensitive to waterlogging and crop growth is not uniform as the water distribution by this method is very uneven.

Keeping in mind that our population continues to grow and farmers must continue to produce more food on less land, consider this irrigation method as their primary method. Indian farmers have invested more than half of their money in this irrigation to make their farms more water-efficient & more productive overall. But they are not aware of with the disadvantages of flood irrigation.

For Farmer’s wellbeing, HPM Chemicals & Fertilizers Ltd. appointed a special management team which gives knowledge about the irrigation method to the farmers. Training and development videos and e-/web-based learning methodologies about the irrigation, being widely used by our team. Our videos and education drives prove fruitful for the farmers and making them ready for the coming agricultural challenges. In our next blog, we will talk about the cons and pros of sprinkler irrigation. To be continued with HPM.