Economising resources in banana cultivation through drip irrigation: A case of south Gujarat

Banana is a water intensive plant with a large total requirement and frequent supply of water. Its cultivation is dominated by conventional irrigation methods with inherent constraints like loss of water and nutrients through evaporation, transpiration, run off and deep percolation beyond the root zone. Moreover, water is a scare resource with water crisis reeling across different regions of state. The adoption of technological interventions like drip irrigation in such crops could play a significant role in improving the water use efficiency and ensuring water security in the region. Thus, the present study aimed at assessing the economic impact of drip irrigation in banana cultivation in terms of increase in yield, income, resource use and allocative efficiency besides decomposing the income difference between the drip and conventional methods of irrigation. The results showed that the returns per rupee of investment on banana under drip and conventional methods were 1:2.60 and 1:1.91, respectively indicating higher profitability and economic viability of banana cultivation under drip method. The variables like banana seedlings, plant protection chemicals and FYM were found to be underutilized while chemical fertilizers, human labour, bullock and machine labour as well as irrigation were being over-utilized during drip irrigation. Moreover, decomposition analysis revealed that the adopters of drip irrigation technology produced 17.26% higher income from banana production than conventional methods with the technology alone contributing 24.02% increase in income. This indicated that income of banana growers practicing drip irrigation would be higher even if they used the same mean level of inputs as farmers practicing conventional irrigation methods. Hence, there is a need to create awareness about the benefits of investment on drip irrigation as an economically viable, resource efficient and environmentally sustainable technology over conventional irrigation methods.