Bhubaneswar: Participating in a symposium titled ‘Crop Water Budgeting’ at Krushi Odisha 2025 on Sunday, Prem Chandra Choudhary, Director Agriculture and Food Production, spoke about the necessity of judicious use of water through an efficient crop planning process enabled through crop water budgeting.
“As Odisha is a agriculture-dominated state with good amount of rainfall, it has ample opportunities for Kharif and Rabi cropping in which water budgeting will support the process,” he added.
Dron Kumar Chandrakar, stressed on the ease of crop water budgeting mobile application which helps in providing data on available water resources and calculates water quantity and it’s usage give a quantitative figure of water surplus or deficit by using primary information which hence enables community planning processes. Kaushal Garg emphasised on the small scale improvement such as elevated farm bund for greater water retention, he shared his experience on using gravity for connecting wells to perennial source of water for availability of water throughout the year. Swapnasri Sarangi touched on the need for an inclusive agriculture planning process and recognition of women as farmers.
“If our solution does not include women we will never be successful in our mission and FES’s work,” she said.
Geeta Ram Satpathy Krushi Mitra shared her experiences of receiving training on Crop Water Budgeting and Sustainable Agriculture Practices and how her demonstrations on the field have influenced community members to diversify crops and adopt sustainable agriculture practices. Sanjukta Ranabida a farmer who has been adopting sustainable agriculture practice for the past four years, shared how her practices towards pesticides use has changed incorporating sustainable practices which has led to reduction in expenditure hence increase in income and has also increased the nutrient fertility of the soil.
Jharna Behera, a Sarpanch in Deogarh district discussed the initiative undertaken by her such as awareness campaigns and meetings with CRP and farmers and Krushi Mitra in her panchayat for water planning and sustainable agriculture practices.
Around 200 farmers had attended the session. For many, the concept of Crop Water Budgeting was new, but they showed great enthusiasm in learning about it and responded positively for the adoption of crop water budgeting and sustainable agriculture practices.
