Abstract
The objectives of the study were to (i) assess the extent of water shortage in the downstream of Teesta River Basin (TRB) areas; (ii) explore the problems associated with crop production due to water shortage in TRB areas and (iii) examine the impact of water shortage on crop production in TRB areas. The study was conducted in four villages under Nilphmari district during April, 2015. By secondary data analysis and farmers’ perception it was clear that water flow and discharge of Teesta river was decreasing significantly during the last 15 years. The major impact was the dramatic increase in costs of irrigation of major crops and ultimately rise in the costs of production and less profit from farming. All of the farmers (100%) opined that the irrigation costs of major crops have been increasing due to shortage of water. The cultivation of LWRC due to water shortage was also a major impact of water shortage on crop production. Farmers were concentrating more on cultivating maize, tobacco, wheat, different types of vegetables etc. compared to rice particularly in dry season. Different types of problems like increased amount of heavy metal in crop land due to continuous uplifting of ground water, decrease soil fertility, increase pests and diseases to crops, fallowing of high and medium high land, increase of fertilizer and pesticide costs etc. were affecting farmers severely in crop production.SAARC J. Agri., 15(2): 113-123 (2017)
Highlights
Bangladesh is a very small agrarian country with 142.32 million people (BBS, 2011)
Project (TBP), which is located at the Teesta Flood Plains (TFP) at Dalia point in Nilphamari district, has been a major source of surface water irrigation in NorthWestern part of Bangladesh by gravity flow since 1990
Arsenic is a great problem in the study area and this problem worsening continually due to the injudicious uplifting of ground water (Rahman, 2005)
Summary
Bangladesh is a very small agrarian country with 142.32 million people (BBS, 2011). In the recent time agriculture sector of the country is facing many challenges especially due to consequences of climate change and manmade causes. Reduction of dry season flow of Teesta has significant consequences on its ecosystem services. In some high land areas, the groundwater level is so deep that sinking of shallow machine is too costly, especially in some areas of Nilphamari Sadar and Joldhaka upazila (Mbugua and Snijders, 2011). Farmers of these area are changing their cropping pattern (larger area coverage by maize and tobacco) without considering ecological effect and food security and moving to other professions other than farming (Islam and Higano, 2011). In view of the above background and facts, the present study aimed at gathering information regarding the following questions: What extent the water shortage is found in Teesta River Basin?
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