Local responses to too much and too little water in the greater Himalayan region
Cultivation of crops in the hot pre-monsoon season rice is grown mostly for household consumption to
(sown February-March and harvested May-June) is a address food security for poor households as it does not
new response to acute waterlogging in lands close command a good price in the market compared to other
to or outside the embankment. Farmers in Tilathi and rice varieties.
Chandrain do more cultivation in this pre-monsoon
season as both villages suffer from long periods of Farmers have started to use other new varieties of
acute waterlogging. In Tilathi, where waterlogging is wheat, maize, and vegetables that are better flood or
more acute, only a small portion of land is cultivated drought adapted and higher yielding. Since the late
in June-July. Farmers cultivate areas with winter 1990s, they have also cultivated an early variety of
(November-March) and spring (February-March) crops in maize that is harvested by May before the first floods
Chandrain village where most of the village is within the occur. Private seed marketing companies introduced
embankment. the new crop varieties and tried them first with big,
entrepreneurial farmers.
Farmers irrigate crops from November to March, when
two to three watering times are required for wheat, Other new crops, such as sunflower, have been
maize, and rice. In all the villages, farmers irrigate fields introduced in the flood-prone villages of Dhamara and
through privately owned bore-pumps. Although farmers Sarsauwa. In the latter village, farmers plant sunflower
in Rahuamani are in the command area of the Koshi on lands completely under water for four months of the
canals, they have not received water from the canals for year. Sunflower is a profitable commercial crop, which
the last five years. destroys weeds, improves soil productivity, and costs
little to cultivate.
New and better crop varieties – The area planted
with a new rice variety has increased in recent years Water lily (Euryale ferox Salisb), called makhana locally,
especially in Tilathi and Chandrain villages. This coarse is now a major aquatic crop cultivated in waterlogged
In some areas of Bihar, water lily (makhana) cultivation is providing an alternative use for waterlogged land next to embankments.
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