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Showing posts from April, 2016

(slightly) Bitter-sweet details about sugarcane: In Marathwada and in general

Lot has been written about sugarcane and drought. HarishDamodran in IE has argued that sugarcane is a scapegoat. The crux of the argument was that the area under sugarcane in Marathwada is about 2% and water-usage in sugarcane occurs over large number of days compared to other crops. Vernacular media in Maharashtra and social media public opinion seems to be critical of sugarcane.                 I always had a simpler question in mind. In total available/utilized water in Marathwada agriculture, how much goes to sugarcane. And I was not able to get the answer. So I decided to search for numbers to find something. Table 1 : Estimates water usage Crop Share in total area under the crop (2014-15) water requirement (in mm) water requirement (in meter) Area under crop in Marathwada (in sq meter)(10000 sq m=1 hectare) total water consumption (in cubic meter) Share (%) ...