Sustainable Effectiveness of Farm Pond Based Water Shed Management Practices in the Hassan District of Karnataka for Enhanced Livelihood Diversification

The Farm pond based water shed management practices supports the sustainable management of natural resources for achieving food, nutritional, environmental and livelihood security. In the present study, The Hassan district of Karnataka was purposively selected due to the implementation of the farm pond based water shed project under the management guidance of BAIF Development research foundation. Ex-post-facto research design was employed. A sample size of 100 farmers from the farm pond based watershed area and 30 farmers from the conventional watershed area was selected purposively to study the sustainable management of the watershed and the impacts. Thus, the total sample was 130. Main findings of the study were in the farm pond based water shed area, totally 45.00 per cent of the farmers belonged to medium level of knowledge category and more than half of respondents (55%) were found to possess the moderately favourable attitude towards the sustainable management of water shed development practices. The check dams and 60 percent of the farm ponds were in good conditions and the storage capacity of the water bodies also playing very important role in the availability of surface water and ground water recharging potential for the bore wells. Among the area under crop cultivation in the farm pond based areas, coconut, vegetables, horse gram, ragi and other pulses and vegetables area has increased and pomegranate has introduced because of improved water availability under drip and fertigation condition. The area under farm forestry in the farm pond based watershed area, forest trees on bunds, forest trees on waste lands and forest and horticultural trees in the farm land were covered successfully by (86.78%, 63.41% and 43.40% respectively) by the respondents. The google image of the farm pond based water shed area pictorially represent the increased green cover in the farm pond based watershed area in the Adihalli-Myllanhalli water shed area.