Farm pond dug up in Jayapal Reddy’s field three years ago begins to yield water

To spend Rs. 10 lakh to dig a farm pond is not possible to every farmer. But S Jayapal Reddy, who with a fond hope of harvesting water, went on and dug up a huge open pit.

“I have about 50 acres land here but as there was no water I embarked upon the task of getting a water harvest pit dug up in my land about three years ago. The pit is 30 feet deep and 100 feet wide.

This effort started yielding some water which is enough to irrigate about 10 acres,” he explained. He draws water with three motors for about five hours daily to wet his paddy fields. He strongly argues in favour of massive plantation and digging up water harvesting structures everywhere to conserve every drop of water.

According to him, the huge trench in his fields also helps recharge bore wells and open wells around his fields belonging to other farmers.

There were no proper rains for the past three years. As a result , he groundwater table also went down and with no irrigation water in these parts of the mandal, the farmers were finding it difficult to continue farming operations with meagre water in extreme weather conditions.

Going by the advice of scientists, many decided to opt for farm ponds, recharge pits and trenches in fields to hold little water when it rained.

“We hope to get good rains this year. But not much is being done to hold as much as possible.

Motivating others

Here we are motivating farmers to opt for farm ponds and rain water harvesting pits wherever possible,” Mr Jayapal Reddy explained.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Telangana / by Gollapudi Srinivasa Rao / Kesamudram (Warangal Dt) – April 26th, 2016