Water tangle: Agro-climatic condition in seven districts in Cauvery basin likely to change

The entire agro-climatic condition in the Cauvery basin area covering seven districts of Karnataka is likely to undergo a change if the contentious final award of the Cauvery River Water Disputes Tribunal (CRDT) is implemented in toto. It is feared that the command areas under key irrigation projects of KRS, Kabini, Hemavathi and Harangi reservoirs would shrink drastically, forcing the farmers, especially those in tail-end areas, to go in for a change in crop pattern. For, the quantum of water allocated by the Tribunal to each of the major projects is far below the existing irrigation potential.

Minister for Water and Power Ch Ahmed Mukhtar on Thursday approved the Draft National Policy for co-generation by utilising bagasse and Biomass and asked the ministry to submit it to the relevant f

Corn ethanol would get a larger share of the U.S.

ISLAMABAD: Around 3,000 megawatts (MW) cheaper electricity would be generated through sugarcane bagasse on fast track basis and investors would be facilitated and encouraged.

CUTTACK: To improve the economic condition of farmers, the district administration has been encouraging them take up soyabean cultivation. And the efforts have yielded desired results with 300 farmers cultivating soyabean in 550 acre in the district.

District agriculture officers claim soyabean cultivation ensures lucrative returns with less input for the farmers. . "A farmer has to spend only Rs 500 per acre while the government provides them seeds and fertilizers worth Rs 3,500 to boost oil seed farming," said an agriculture officer.

“Land acquisition is becoming a bane of farmers in Haryana as the land is allegedly acquired to give benefit to brokers in most of the cases and the poor farmer is the scapegoat," former spokesperson of the Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee Ved Prakash Virodhi today said.

Stressing that the land acquisition by the government should only be for public service utilities and done in a transparent manner, fully protecting the interests of the affected farmers, he said the Haryana government should immediately stop all land acquisition processes and wait for the new amended Land Acquisition Bill which is on the anvil. He said the Bill had been finalised and was likely to be passed in the Budget Session of Parliament.

'This year, due to drought conditions, the production estimate was lowered to 520 mn litres. Nearly 500,000 litres of water is required per distillery per day'

Distilleries in Maharashtra face a severe cutback in operations and ethanol output due to the state’s severe water shortage. Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil, president of the All India Ethanol Manufacturers Association, told Business Standard: “Of the 90 distilleries, a large number are located in drought-hit Sangli, Satara, Ahmad-nagar, Pune and Solapur districts. Maharashtra’s ethanol production during the current fiscal year is estimated at 52 crore litres, compared to 54 crore in 2011-12 and 68 crore in 2010-11.”

“Where there is a will, there is a way”, goes the adage. It has come true in case of farmers of Krishna belt in Bagalkot district. The farmers in Jamkhandi taluk, suffering huge losses due to the shortage of water to the sugarcane crop, have come together and completed within a fortnight a huge project of lifting 1 TMCFT of water from downstream backwaters of the Almatti dam to upstream on River Krishna and storing it in Chikkapadasalagi barrage for summer.

Without waiting for the government, the farmers under the banner of ‘Krishna Teera Raitha Sangha’ mobilised funds, labour and material on their own and completed the task they had taken up as a challenge.

Many industrial units functioning near Kalingarayan Canal

Farmers in the Kalingarayan ayacut areas in the district are now forced to use water from Kalingarayan Canal that is mixed with untreated effluents and waste water discharged by textile processing and tannery units. The Public Works Department stopped on December 20 the discharge of water in the canal that feeds the ayacut. But the 56-and-a-half mile long irrigation canal connecting River Bhavani with River Noyyal still carries water. “The canal should be dry by this time. But there is still good flow in the canal because the industrial units are dumping thousands of gallons of untreated effluents and waste water every day,” alleges Kalingarayan Pasana Sabhai president V.M. Velayudham.