Virtual water trade in dairy economy: irrigation water productivity in Gujarat

ith the advent of green revolution technologies andwater-intensive crops, the pressure on groundwater forirrigation has enormously increased in Gujarat [Bhatia1992]. Secular decline in groundwater levels leading to increasein cost of water abstraction structures is depriving resource poor,small, and marginal farmers of direct access to groundwater.Those, whose wells have dried up, largely depend on waterpurchased from rich well owners often at prohibitive prices tosustain irrigated agriculture [Gass et al 1996; IRMA/UNICEF2001]. To cope with the situation, farmers are shifting to lowwater-intensive crops having high economic value [Kumar 2000,Kumar forthcoming]. Farmers are also switching from cropproduction to dairy production given the short-term cashflow and stable income from it. The dairy industry has seen amajor upswing after the inception of ‘Operation Flood Programme’in India, which was launched by the National Dairy DevelopmentBoard, Anand in 1970. India has emerged as the largest producerof milk in the world by attaining 81 million tonnes during 2001[Singh and Pundir 2003]. Gujarat is one of the fore runners ofdairy production in the country. But this changing trend has addedto the burden on already stressed groundwater resources.Dairy farming involves not only direct consumptive water useby cattle for milk production, but also embedded water in greenfodder and byproducts of cereal crops and other cereals and cropresidues that are fed to cattle. Dairy farmers in Gujarat are heavilydependent on import of dry fodder and feed, which points togrowing trade in ‘virtual water’ [Allan 1993]. Virtual water isdefined as the volume of water required to produce a commodityor service [Allan 1998; Hoekstra 1998]. It has also been called‘embedded water’ [Hoekstra 1993]. The transfer of virtual waterembedded in various commodities and services that are tradedis becoming an important element of water management discus-sions at global as well as regional level, particularly in regionswhich experience water deficits for food production [Chapagainand Hoekstra 2003]. Chapagain and Hoekstra (2003) havedeveloped a methodology to quantify the virtual water flowsbetween nations through trading of livestock and livestock