Irrigated lands around the world occupy about 19% of the cultivated area, but yield as much agricultural produce as irrigated. Irrigated agriculture accounts for 40% of world food production and 60% of grain production.
Irrigated farming has historically been an alternative to traditional crop production, which directly depends on the soil and climatic conditions of the region and meteorological factors. Irrigation (or irrigation) is the main type of land reclamation measures, which consists in creating and maintaining such a water regime of the soil that plants need for growth and maturation.
Thanks to artificial irrigation, it is possible to cultivate crops that under natural conditions lack moisture, organize crops in arid areas in such a way as to obtain guaranteed high and sustainable yields.
The productivity of crops grown in irrigation agriculture (such as wheat, rice, sugar beets, etc.) is 2-5 times higher than the results of traditional crop production. In combination with irrigation, technologies of repeated and compacted sowing are used. This allows you to efficiently use the land, collecting from the fields up to 3 crops per year. Experts say that irrigation farming increases the profitability of the agricultural business from 12% to 20%.
Irrigated agriculture in our country
The origins of water management in Russia are associated with the time of the reign of Peter I. And the first Russian state institution, which was responsible for the issues of watering the land, as well as the problems of draining bogs, was the department of land improvements of the Ministry of Agriculture created in the late 19th century. As a result of ongoing work on regulating water intake from rivers and building wells, 3.8 million hectares of land were irrigated in Russia.
Reclamation activity, which was suspended in connection with the revolutionary events of 1917, was resumed by the Soviet state during the years of the first five-year plans. By 1941, the irrigated area amounted to 11.8 million hectares. In the postwar years, the destroyed hydraulic structures were intensively restored. A huge achievement of the Soviet period was the construction of unique irrigation and drainage systems. These are the Volga-Don and Kuban-Egorlyksky canals, hydraulic structures of the Barybinsky steppe in Western Siberia, the Saratov irrigation canal. The main suppliers of moisture to the fields are water arteries such as the Great Stavropol and North Crimean canals.
The peak of achievements in domestic irrigation falls on 1985, when about 20 million hectares were irrigated in the country. By the beginning of the 90s, the area of reclamation lands amounted to almost 10% of the total area of arable land. But the collapse of the USSR and land reform carried out in those years had a negative impact on the formation of the reclamation complex. Work on the creation of hydraulic structures was practically stopped. The reduction to 4.5 million hectares of land used for irrigation was critical.
According to experts, in order to ensure the food security of our country, the minimum area of irrigated land should be around 10 million hectares. That is why the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, based on the development of the All-Russian Research Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Land Reclamation, created the state program "Fertility", which operated until 2013. Then it was replaced by a new federal targeted state program “Reclamation”, designed for the period until 2020. The aim of the current measures is to provide the necessary increase in irrigated land, as well as to reduce water consumption by 20% for the needs of irrigated agriculture.
The relevance of irrigation is obvious, since a deficit of precipitation in Russia is observed at 80% of the total arable land. The main areas of irrigated land are concentrated in the arid regions of the country: Lower and Middle Volga, Trans-Volga, Northern Caucasus and Krasnodar Territory, Crimean Peninsula, Western and Southern Siberia, Transbaikalia and the Far East.
- The traditional regions of irrigation agriculture include the Saratov, Volgograd, Astrakhan regions, Tatarstan and Kalmykia. Arid summers have been and remain the norm.
- Agriculture in the North Caucasus and the Krasnodar Territory is unthinkable without irrigation due to the insignificant amount of precipitation there.
- Actual today is the irrigation of the Crimean steppe zone in connection with the problems of water intake from the North Crimean canal.
- In addition, vegetable, fruit, forage crops, meadows and pastures in areas that did not previously know drought require watering. This is the Altai Territory, the Central Black Earth Region and some territories of the Non-Black Earth Region.
According to statistics, today in Russia reclaimed land accounts for 8% of the total area of arable land. And they give about 15% of gross production. Using the irrigation system of agriculture, about 70% of vegetables, 100% of rice, more than 20% of forage crops are produced. Under irrigation conditions, mainly cereals (wheat, corn, millet, rice, etc.), legumes, industrial crops (sunflowers, cotton, etc.), vegetables, fruits, and various types of rough and succulent feeds are grown.
