Agricultural Water Management Techniques Impact and Solutions

Conservation of natural resources is the efficient use of natural resources and treat based on natural law. Definition of conservation is an effort or action to maintain the existence of something continuously sustainable either quality or quantity.

In an effort to preservation (conservation) of land and water can serve to enhance the agricultural land to be productive to produce food for most people.

Soil and water conservation is a fairly conventional way can overcome the above problems. By implementing a system of soil and water conservation is expected to tackle erosion, provide water and increase the nutrient content in the soil and make the land no longer critical.

Agricultural Water Management

There are three methods in the conduct soil and water conservation are physical methods with the processing of the soil, vegetative methods by utilizing vegetation and plants to reduce erosion and water supply as well as chemical methods that utilize chemicals to preserve the land.

Definition of dry land is rain-fed land (rain fed) which can be cultivated lowland (lowland, wetland) or field (upland). Dry land generally in the form of land boss, the criteria that distinguish dry land is the source of water. The source of water for dry land is rain water, while wetlands in addition to rainwater also a source of irrigation water.

Dry land agriculture has the physical condition and the potential of land is very diverse with socio-economic conditions are generally poor farmers with limited agricultural land resources.

Dry land is the largest agricultural resources in terms of breadth, but the profile of farming in agro-ecosystems is partly still marked by low production is closely related to the low productivity of the land.

In some areas there has been degradation due to less conscientious conventional management and cause farmers are unable to increase their income. Based on these constraints, it is to ensure the agricultural production in a sustainable high enough required an actual concept and proper planning to utilize these resources, especially land dry land.

Dry land farming, in a natural state has a variety of conditions that hinder its development, among others; water constraints, low soil fertility, are vulnerable to erosion, undulating to hilly topography, land productivity is low, and the availability of facilities are inadequate and difficult in marketing.

Conservation tillage is any tillage method that aims to reduce the amount of erosion, runoff and, if possible, be able to maintain or increase production.

Further stated that to meet these criteria should be able to produce a soil processing rough terrain so that deposits increased depression and infiltration, and can leave the remains of plants and weeds on the soil surface in order to withstand the energy of raindrops that fall.

This becomes important in the crop, because at that time most rain intensity has been great and there is no plant canopy that can withstand the energy of raindrops that fall.

Commonly practiced water supply farmers with irrigated fields are inundated constantly so incredibly wasteful use of water ranges between 11000-14000 m3 / hectare during the dry season and 8000-10000 m3 / hectare in the rainy season.

In addition to inefficient, it also has the potential to reduce (1) the efficiency of nitrogen uptake, (2) increase the emissions of methane into the atmosphere, (3) and raise the seepage is causing more and more irrigation water is needed. Water-saving techniques in the fields is an attempt to suppress the loss of water the fields mapped to maintain or improve the grain yield per unit area and volume of water.

Reduction of water due to percolation, seepage, and runoff can reduce irrigation water use. The availability of irrigation water for rice cultivation is more limited because: (1) increasing the use of water for industry and households, (2) the duration of the rainfall is shorter due to climate change, (3) a backup source of local water is also reduced, and (4) the silting of reservoirs.

Prioritized irrigation water savings during the dry season in the irrigation flow is usually prone to drought. As an alternative strategy that can be done are the selection of varieties and water management methods with methods macak-macak, intermittent, and the alternation of wet dry watering. In this way the rice area can be irrigated in the dry season to 2 times wider.

The principle of water-saving technology is reducing the flow of unproductive as seepage, percolation, and evaporation, as well as maintaining the transpiration stream. This can be done from now on land preparation, planting, and during plant growth.

The implementation of the utilization of irrigation water varies from one region irrigated by the region other irrigation due to differences in the characteristics of the distribution of rainfall, the condition of the network infrastructure of irrigation, the level of vulnerability to drought, the parameters of soil physics, hydrology land, cultivation techniques, irrigation practices of plot to plot, and organization of water users,

Water efficient arrangement can increase cropping intensity, reducing the need for water discharge, and reduce the effects of drought through:

Intermittent irrigation

Intermittent irrigation is setting the conditions of land in dry conditions and stagnant interchangeably. Such conditions are intended among other things to: conserve irrigation water to areas that can be irrigated become more widespread, provide opportunities for plant roots to get air so it can grow deeper, to reduce the incidence of iron toxicity, reduce the accumulation of organic acids and hydrogen sulphide (H2S).

Agricultural Water Management techniques

Which inhibit the development of roots, to enable microorganisms microbes inhibit, reduce of lodging, reduce the number of chicks that are not productive (not produce panicles and grain), uniform ripening grain and speed up the harvest time, facilitate the embedding of fertilizer into the soil (topsoil), facilitate pest control snails, reduce the spread of brown plant hoppers and stem borers, and reduce damage to rice crops for pest rodents.

Irrigation infrastructure

In general, the source of irrigation derived from tertiary irrigation canals, but in some locations often there is limited availability of water from tertiary canals caused by tissue damage to the irrigation and water allocation disproportionate. In this case the land contained in the downstream portion of water gets smaller proportion than the upstream. Therefore, in some areas there is supplementary irrigation sources such as ponds, dam’s trench, long storage and shallow groundwater wells that can be used in paddy fields irrigated and rain fed areas.

Agricultural Water Management solutions

Reservoir is a place to get the flow of surface water and rainfall as a source of supplementary irrigation in the dry season. Trenches are building supplementary source of irrigation water in the river channel created by means of stemming the flow of river water and distribute it to land in the vicinity. While long storage is a water reservoir in the form of elongated channels that hold the overflow of river water / water irrigation channels at the end of the rainy season.

Besides the three buildings are included irrigation shallow ground water sources that can be built inside or outside the paddy fields. To improve the efficiency of water use, sources of supplementary irrigation water mentioned above can be exploited through water-saving irrigation techniques.

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