Manav Singh had been farming his land for the past 20 years. His father had also been farming in the same land. But now he is unable to irrigate the agricultural land as the ground water level has gone down and the monsoon rains are also irregular.

He has an option to connect the canal irrigation that the Government has initiated but is finding it difficult to implement the process. He knows that Farmers worldwide will need to increase crop production, either by increasing the amount of agricultural land to grow crops or by enhancing productivity on existing agricultural lands to meet the global demand.

However, the ecological and social trade-off of clearing more land for agriculture is often high, particularly in the tropics. And right now, crop yields the amount of crops harvested per unit of land cultivated are growing too slowly to meet the predicted demand for food. Even if some regions increase their output and traders reduce the mismatch between supply and demand, doubling food production by 2050 will undeniably be a major challenge.

Thus the last resort for farmers, Manav Singh thinks would be to grow more on the land they currently operate through what is called “sustainable intensification”. This means using precision farming tools, such as GPS fertiliser dispenser, advanced irrigation systems, and environmentally optimized crop rotations.

These methods can help produce more crops, especially in parts of Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe with large yield gaps. They can also reduce the negative environmental impacts from over stressing resources -preventing groundwater depletion and the destruction of fertile lands through over-use of fertiliser.

Net irrigated area (%) of India has increased from nearly 18 to 48% in recent times due to government interventions at various levels (Fig. 1). Although the government has given much emphasis on improving canal system in various five year plans but it has declined over years (Fig. 1). People have identified groundwater irrigation as much reliable and independent source of irrigation. Groundwater irrigation has taken quantum jump since 1965.