KADWANCHI’S 400-ODD farmers received 412 mm of rain in 2015-16, about 60 per cent of their average annual rainfall, but the cultivators weren’t unduly perturbed. For Kadwanchi village, located in arid Marathwada’s Jalna district, has witnessed a rare triumph.
Even as neighbouring villages in drought-hit Jalna reported a next to nothing yield in the kharif season of 2015, Kadwanchi’s villagers were adding 40 new farm ponds to the existing 347.
They owe that success to an initiative that began in 1995-1996, when the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) of Jalna, established by non-profit organisation Marathwada Sheti Sahaya Mandal, undertook a watershed project in Kadwanchi, 18 km from Jalna city, through a sponsorship from the Indian Council of Agricultural research (ICAR), New Delhi.
The collective water storage made it possible for Kadwanchi to go in for high value crops such as grapes, ginger and chillies.
Read more of this report by Kavitha Iyer in The Indian Express.....
