Optimal Use of Land and Water Resources of a River Basin: Case Study

Abstract

Due to quick rise in population and rapid urbanization more water needs to be diverted for domestic and industrial use thus decreasing the allocation of water for irrigation in the near future. Therefore it is the need of the hour to optimally allocate available land and water resources for irrigated agriculture in a river basin so that maximum benefits from the available resources are received. In view of the above in a given agro-climate region, an optimal cropping pattern can be developed such that the return from the available land resources is maximized with minimum consumption of available water for irrigation. Hence the present study aims at maximizing net return from the cultivable crops in a command area by satisfying land availability, Irrigation water requirement, surface, ground as well as total water availability and minimum and maximum crop area constraints considering the projected population by the year 2051 AD. For the purpose of analysis, the Brahmani Basin in Odisha State has been considered as a case study. For the purpose of optimization Linear Programming (LP) model has been used. The Software package Language for Interactive Discrete Optimizer (LINDO) has been used for solving the LP model. For estimating crop water requirement, the guidelines of Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) have been considered. The optimal cropping pattern so developed utilizes 3186.95 MCM water and generates a net profit of Rs 183489.2 lakhs against the existing cropping pattern which uses 4033.21 MCM of water and generates a net profit of Rs 114930 lakhs.