Optimum Allocation of Water and Land Resource for Maximizing Farm Income of Jabalpur District, Madhya Pradesh

Abstract

The continuous decrease and irrational use of water resources is the key issue for the proper application of water resources in tribal areas of Jabalpur district. This study attempts to propose a new aspect of optimum allocation of land & water resources in Jabalpur District. The minimum cultivated area that ensures food requirement and land constraint have a direct impact on water resources allocation. To conduct an accurate program for land and water resource allocation for water deficit area a multi- constraint linear programming model (LPM) was developed by implanting land resource as a constraint on water resources allocation which has to be considered by the demand of water resources in the agriculture sector. The result shows that increase in major crops area like rice, wheat, gram, maize and oilseeds crop areas against the reduction in sorghum, lentil, and sugarcane. Existing cropping intensity of the district was 150 %. To achieve the maximum profit per unit of land i.e. cropping intensity more than 200% for district, therefore an extensive measures was made for district to fix out the water demand supply gap for agriculture. In this study a user friendly Linear programming software was used to develop a model for optimum allocation of resources under seasonal and multi-crop condition for Jabalpur district. The net annual profit is increased by 9.1% under optimal allocation conditions. The sensitivity analysis of model parameter shows that the superior price of crop is the most sensitive parameter followed by the crop area. The results obtained from this study will definitely help policy makers to decide how to properly utilize and promote the water and land resources for the available area.