Improving Irrigation System Performance Through Modernization

It is a very frightening fact that by 2050 India's water demand from all sectors will be about 1447 Billion Cubic Metres/annum (BCM/ann) and will exceed the limit of available supplies of 1120 BCM/ann (surface water 690BCM/ann and groundwater 430 BCM/ann) by more than 20%.[1]. Increased food and fibre demands from an ever increasing population, projected to be 1.614 billion by 2050 [2], up by 25% from 2010, will have to come from productivity improvements in existing irrigated agricultural areas. These improvements will need to be achieved with less water and less farm land because of the competition from urbanization, industrialization, the need to provide water for environmental purposes and to respond to climate change impacts. Therefore, the challenge facing India is to make existing irrigation systems more efficient and productive to better utilize the shrinking agricultural land and water resources.

In Victoria Australia, severe water shortages brought about by a prolonged 11 year drought sequence has spurred a lot of innovative thinking about how to use the limited available water more efficiently in irrigation and at the same time, deliver significant improvements in the performance of irrigation systems.

Investment in modernization, focused on automation of large unlined, gravity fed irrigation systems has resulted in increases in efficiency of existing open, unlined gravity irrigation systems from about 70% up to about 90% - a remarkable outcome. The water saved is being reallocated equally between urban and industrial users, the environment and back to existing farmers to improve their security of supply.

The investment program is a mix of both hardware and software involving remotely controlled gates, accurate water measuring devices, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and system management software. This investment, combined with advanced modelling and control technologies, has resulted in the delivery of significantly improved services to irrigators in terms of equity, reliability and flexibility, and huge improvements in the management capability and performance of existing large-scale irrigation systems.