Economic Assessment of Water Harvesting plus Supplemental Irrigation for Improving Water Productivity of a Pulse–Cotton Based Integrated Farming System in Telangana, India

An integrated farming system (IFS) aims to sustain agricultural production, maintain farm incomes, safeguard the environment and respond to climate change impacts. Experiments in a tribal farmer's fields during 2016–2018 with two IFS models (pulse and cotton) were conducted in the Telangana region, India. An on‐farm reservoir (OFR) is designed for storing surface runoff based on the area and runoff coefficient determined through a modelling approach. The results demonstrated how supplemental irrigation and water harvesting are the most important and proven technologies for improving crop productivity and the efficient use of water in dryland areas of the semi‐arid tropics. The economic analysis indicated that after introduction of OFR technology, farmers' profits were increased under both scenarios of prolonged and short dry spells. According to the results, adoption of the OFR and IFS models not only ensured economic returns but provided regular employment even on less than 1 ha of land, which is usually non‐sustainable if monocropping is being practised. The approaches used in this work might be useful for guiding producers’ decisions in optimizing resources and selecting crops based on economic and water use efficiency.