"In this timely publication, Dr Rott has sourced contributions from scientists working on cane throughout the tropics...Richly referenced, this is both an informed and informative book that is well written. It will appeal to both researchers and cane growers." International Sugar Journal/Agribusiness intelligence Sugarcane is the source of over three quarters of the world's sugar, and is grown widely in the tropics and sub-tropics. Despite rising demand, average yields have not increased significantly, partly because of continued vulnerability to pests and diseases. In addition, cultivation has been seen as damaging biodiversity and soil health with a negative effect on both yields and the environment. This volume summarises the wealth of research addressing these challenges. Volume 1 reviews cultivation techniques and sustainability issues. Part 1 summarises current best practice in sugarcane cultivation across the value chain, from planting through to post-harvest operations. Part 2 looks at ways of measuring the environmental impact of sugarcane cultivation as well as ways of supporting smallholders. With its distinguished editor and international team of expert authors, this will be a standard reference for sugarcane scientists, growers, government and non-governmental agencies responsible for supporting and monitoring the impact of sugarcane cultivation. It is accompanied by a companion volume reviewing breeding, pest and disease management.

Agriculture is a major user of water resources and also contributes to water pollution from excess nutrients, pesticides and other pollutants. But the competition for water is increasing and the costs of water pollution can be high. Farming accounts for around 70% of water used in the world today. Climate change could affect water supply and agriculture through changes in the seasonal timing of rainfall and snow pack melt, as well as higher incidence and severity of floods and droughts. Sustainable management of water in agriculture is critical to increase agricultural production, ensure water can be shared with other users and maintain the environmental and social benefits of water systems. Agriculture needs therefore to use water in a more efficient way. Irrigation Management is important since it helps determine future Irrigation expectations. The goal of irrigation management is to use water in the most profitable way at sustainable production levels. For production agriculture this generally means supplementing precipitation with irrigation. The main challenge confronting water management in agriculture is to improve water use efficiency and its sustainability. This can be achieved through; an increase in crop water through irrigation, a decrease in water losses through soil evaporation that could otherwise be used by plants for their growth, and an increase in soil water storage within the plant rooting zone through better soil and water management practices at farm and area-wide (catchment) scales. Tracking and quantifying water fluxes at different spatial and temporal scales within the plant rooting zone remains a formidable challenge because of the interactions between water sources from rainfall, irrigation and subsurface water on plant uptake, soil evaporation, plant transpiration (water transpired by plants) and runoff or drainage losses from crop-growing areas. The use of isotopic and nuclear techniques to investigate the relative importance of soil and irrigation management factors that influence these interactions will greatly assist in the development of water management packages that involve the consideration of soil nutrient status, type of crops grown, growth stages and the overall agro-ecosystems to minimize not only water but also nutrient losses from the farmlands and enhance water and nutrient use efficiencies in agro-ecosystems under both rainfed and irrigated conditions.

The countries that make up the MENA region display wide diversity. One of the poorest countries in the world sits alongside two of the wealthiest, whilst the region's natural resources range from immeasurable oil and gas reserves to some of the scantiest natural endowments anywhere in the world. Yet through this diversity runs a common thread: water scarcity. Now, through the impact of human development and climate change, the water resource itself is changing,bringing new risks and increasing the vulnerability of all those dependent on water. Chris Ward and Sandra Ruckstuhl assess the increased challenges now facing the countries of the region, placing particular emphasis on water scarcity and the resultant risks to livelihoods, food security and the environment. They evaluate the risks and reality of climate change in the region, and offer an assessment of the vulnerability of agriculture and livelihoods. In a final section, they explore the options for responding to the new challenges, including policy, institutional, economic and technical measures.

This book uses resource economics costing approaches incorporating externalities to estimate the returns for the country's irrigation and demonstrates how underestimating the cost of water leads farmers to overestimate profits. The importance of the subject can be judged in light of the fact that India is the largest user of groundwater both for irrigation and for drinking purposes, pumping twice as much as the United States and six times as much as Europe. Despite water's vital role in ensuring economic security for the nation and farmers alike by supporting more than 70% of food production, water resource economists are yet to impress upon farmers and policymakers the true value of water and the urgent need for its sustainable extraction, recharge and use. In an endeavor to promote more awareness, the book further delineates the roles of the demand side and supply side in the economics of irrigation, and explains how the cost of water varies with the efforts to recharge it, crop patterns, degrees of initial and premature well failure and degrees of externalities. It also discusses the importance of micro-irrigation in the economics of saving water for irrigation, estimating the marginal productivity of water and how it improves with drip irrigation, the economics of water sharing and water markets, optimal control theory in sustainable extraction of water, payment of ecosystem services for water and how India can effectively recover. In closing, the book highlights the role of socioeconomic and hydrogeological factors in the economics of irrigation, which vary considerably across hard rock areas and the resulting limitations on generalizing.

The application of machines and better power sources to enhance agricultural production has been one of the most significant developments in agriculture. Mechanization of agriculture is needed for development and optimal utilization of natural resources leading to higher productivity and reduced cost of production for greater profitability, economic competitiveness and sustainability. Mechanization also imparts capacity to the farmers to carry out farm operations with dignity, comfort and freedom from drudgery, making the farming agreeable vocation for educated youth as well. It helps the farmers to achieve timeliness in farm operations and apply costly input with reduced quantity for better efficacy and efficiency. Small and marginal farmers can now make use of high capacity agricultural machines on custom hire basis. The results of this development can be seen in many aspects such as increase in productivity and production per worker, precision in application of crop inputs, increase in cropping intensity due to timeliness of operations, increase in the quality of produce, reduction in grain losses and increase in farm employment. Mechanization is particularly advantageous when it can minimize a high peak labour demand that occurs over a relatively short period of time each year. Mechanization also encourages better management of farm inputs, improvement in working conditions and performance of jobs that would otherwise be difficult by hand. It also helps in reducing the cost of production. This book 'Mechanization of Cultivated Crops' covers the farm tools and equipment used in different operations such as land development, tillage, seeding/planting, interculture, fertilizer application, plant protection, harvesting and threshing and residue management. The book can be referred as a textbook for the under graduate students of agriculture and under graduate and post graduate students of agricultural engineering.

The book Drip and Sprinkler Irrigation is intended as a text book of micro irrigation design and practices for the students of the agricultural sciences and the professionals and workers in the field of micro irrigation. The book discusses the type and components, hydraulics and design, installation and maintenance of micro irrigation system. It contains good number of numerical as example and task to get the students familiar to the requirements, complicacies, and possible remedies in actual working condition. In addition to conventional broad and short questions in every of the book there are multiple choice questions to assist the students in preparing the competitive examinations.

The AQUASTAT Programme was initiated with a view to presenting a comprehensive picture of water resources and irrigation in the countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and providing systematic, up-to-date and reliable information on water for agriculture and rural development. This report presents the results of the most recent survey carried out in the 22 countries of the Southern and Eastern Asia region, and it analyzes the changes that have occurred in the ten years since the first survey.

In global studies related to water use, food production or climate change, knowing the location of irrigate agriculture is important in order to assess better the impact of water use on the available water resources. The Global map of irrigation areas shows the amount of area equipped for irrigation around the turn of the tewnty-first century as a percentage of the total area on a raster with a resolution of 5 minutes.

This publication describes the experience of a number of transition countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union with crafting regulatory frameworks for irrigation water users' organizations. It also seeks to distil a number of key regulatory requirements. As a result, this study serves as a design/drafting manual for policymakers and for drafters of legislation on water users' organizations.

Irrigation has made a major contribution to poverty reduction in the past decades, enabling higher yields and better nutrition. Despite these achievements, large-scale irrigation schemes have usually yielded low returns and attracted negative publicity because of their adverse environmental and social impacts. As a result, the Bank has largely switched its support for irrigation away from new construction toward rehabilitation and policy reform. This evaluation supports the need for reform but shows that there are substantial benefits from further investment in infrastructure. This study analyzes these issues through an impact evaluation of one of the last 'old generation' of projects in which the Bank directly supported creation of a new irrigation scheme: India's Second and Third Andhra Pradesh Irrigation Projects (AP II and AP III). Together these projects created a new command area, the Srisailem Right Branch Canal (SRBC), and rehabilitated an existing one that had been constructed with Bank assistance, the Sriramasagar Project.

This publication describes the MASSCOTE methodology, illustrated by several applications in Asia. MASSCOTE is a comprehensive methodology for analysing the modernization of canal operation. The aim is to enable experts to work together with users in determining improved processes for cost-effective service-oriented management. It is based on previous tools and approaches widely used in Asia by FAO in its modernization training programme (rapid appraisal procedures and benchmarking). From diagnosis through the formulation of operational units and the planning of a service (based on the vision agreed upon with the users), MASSCOTE entails a systematic, ten-step, mapping exercise. The accompanying CD-ROMs contain the full document in English, excerpts in French, a draft version in Arabic and Chinese, training presentations and material, and a number of documents and references on irrigation system operation and management System requirements: PC with Intel Pentium(r) processor and Microsoft(r)Windows 95/98/200/Me/NT/XP; 256 MB of RAM; 50 MB of available hard-disk space; SuperVGA monitor; 256 colours at 1024x768; Adobe Acrobat(r) Reader (not included on CD-ROM)]

General consensus among policy-makers in the developing world and aid agencies is that the lack of capacity is constraining the development of irrigated agriculture. Although this concern is not new, it is now receiving much attention in the irrigation and drainage world where it is becoming an issue in its own right rather than being embedded in infrastructure investment projects. This publication contains a synthesis of a workshop that brought together a range of case studies from different parts of the world, as well as three keynote papers prepared for the workshop based on the available literature and experience. The complete workshop materials, which include several country papers and complementary documents, are included in the CD-ROM that accompanies the document. System requirements to use the CD-ROM: PC with Intel Pentium(r) processor and Microsoft(r) Windows 95/ 98 / 2000 / Me / NT / XP, or Apple Macintosh with PowerPC(r) processor and Mac OS(r) 8.6 / 9.0.4 / 9.1 / X; 64 MB of RAM; 24 MB available on hard-disk space; internet browser such as Netscape(r) Navigator or Microsoft(r) Internet Explorer; Adobe Acrobat(r) Reader (Included on CD-ROM)]

The use of urban wastewater in agriculture is receiving renewed attention, with the increasing scarcity of fresh water resources in many arid and semi-arid regions of the world. Wastewater is a low-cost alternative to conventional irrigation water, although it may carry health and environmental risks.This book critically reviews experience worldwide of these issues. Emphasis is placed on untreated wastewater use by means of field-based case studies from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. It brings together a range of perspectives including economic, health, agronomic, environmental, institutional, and policy dimensions.

All statistical evidence confirms that agriculture is the key sector for water management, now and in the next decades. Nevertheless, the rural water development sector fails at present to get priority compared to other competing sectors in international fora. Strong and new arguments are needed to bring rural water back "on-line". The prospects for the future are clear. Agriculture will have to respond to changing patterns of demand for food and combat food insecurity and poverty amongst marginalized communities. In so doing, agriculture will have to compete for scarce water with other users and reduce pressure on the water environment. Agriculture policies and investments will therefore need to become much more strategic. They will have to unlock the potential of agricultural water management practices to raise productivity, spread equitable access to water, and conserve the natural productivity of the water resource base. (FAO)

"Water is a vital element for agricultural production and for economic development in general. However, the spatial and temporal distribution of water in Mexico restrains its use. Because of this distribution, it has been necessary to build a large infrastructure to capture, store, and allot this element among water users." Around the world, countries that once promoted more government involvement in irrigation management are adopting new policies that do just the opposite, creating incentives for farmers to take over the management of operations and maintenance, while government agencies focus on improving the management of water at the main system level. Is this just another management fad; or will the pendulum that is now swinging toward greater management control by farmers soon swing back the other way, toward greater state control? This volume reports on four countries where the state's role in irrigation management has undergone fundamental change and where the result has been a much greater management role for farmers. These studies address the political antecedents of participatory irrigation management (PIM) policies, the process of implementing the policies, and the second-generation challenges of sustaining PIM. These experiences will prove useful to policymakers and irrigation professionals who are facing similar challenges in their own countries.

The overriding lesson from history is that most irrigation-based civilizations fail. As we enter the third millennium the question arises: Will ours be any different?

For 6,000 years, irrigation has ranked among the most powerful tools of human advancement. The story of settled agriculture, the growth of cities, and the rise of early empires is, to no small degree, a story of controlling water to make the land more prosperous and habitable. Pillar of Sand examines the history, challenges, and pitfalls of irrigated agriculture — from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to twentieth-century India and the United States. By unmasking the risks faced by irrigation-based societies — including water scarcity, soil salinization, and conflicts over rivers — water specialist Sandra Postel connects the lessons of the past with the challenge of making irrigation thrive into the twenty-first century and beyond.

Protecting rivers and vital ecosystems as the world aims to feed 8 billion people will require a doubling of water productivity — getting twice as much benefit from each gallon removed from rivers, lakes, and aquifers. Pillar of Sand points the way toward managing the growing competition for scarce water. And it lays out a strategy for correcting a startling flaw of the modern irrigation age — its failure to better the lives of the majority of the world's poorest farmers.

Modern Irrigation Technologies reviews the experience of small holders with irrigation technologies under a range of diverse conditions in many different countries. Some people argue that modern irrigation technologies are the key to increased food production. However, projects introducing modern irrigation technologies in the developing world have often failed because the irrigation hardware, which has been developed for high-technology commercial agriculture, cannot be easily adapted for the use of the smallholder. The author identifies the pre-conditions relating to water availability, institutional support and economic opportunity that must be satisfied before small holders in developing countries can adopt irrigation methods and benefit from them. The circumstances in which modern technologies have been introduced are identified, and the relative success or otherwise of the initiatives are summarized. The book also contains a practical review of the range of irrigation hardware that is available and indicates the types of equipment that are more likely to meet the requirements of the smallholder sector. Modern Irrigation Technologies will be an invaluable guide to project workers, planners and small holders involved in planning and designing irrigation projects.

Potential Use of Solar Energy and Emerging Technologies in Micro Irrigation is a book that deeply emphasizes on the various kinds of applications that solar energy can have in the field of micro irrigation. The book explores areas in which the solar energy can be applied and the technologies that can be run on solar power. The book also explores the possible applications of current solar technologies in this field and throws some light on the ways in which the solar power can cut down the costs significantly and also reduce the pressure on other sources of energy.

This publication is the outcome of an IAEA coordinated research project which addressed the problem of advancing salinity in irrigated soils of arid and semi-arid regions. Seven participating countries presented their studies focusing on alternative strategies and on integrated soil and water management practices. The publication informs readers on ways to improve crop productivity and sustainability through water and salinity management and defines approaches and technologies to assess and monitor soil water content and salinity. The test results of a new landscape soil moisture measuring tool (cosmic ray neutron sensor) for area-wide soil water measurements are also presented.