Watershed Management Approach for Conserving Water Resource in Rainfed Areas

Soil and water resources are of utmost importance for fulfilling the requirement of food, fodder, fibre, fuel and furniture of fast growing population of the country. Food production from crops and livestock must increase in order to meet future demand. Since the productivity of irrigated areas has started to stagnate or even decline, the attention now must be focused on rainfed areas that have the potential to sustain food production in the country. However, productivity improvement and expansion in rainfed agriculture in developing countries have remained rather slow compared to irrigated agriculture (Rosegrant et al., 2002). Watershed development program has been recognized as a potential engine for agriculture growth and development in fragile and marginal rainfed areas (Joshi et al. 2005; Ahluwalia and Wani et al. 2006) as it can address several of the issues associated with these ecosystems. Management of natural resources at watershed scale produces multiple benefits in terms of increasing food production, improving livelihoods, protecting environment, addressing gender and equity issues along with biodiversity concerns (Sharma, 2002; Wani et al. 2003 a, b; Joshi et al. 2005; and Rockstorm et al., 2007).