Mitigation means actions that we can take before or at the beginning of drought to help reduce the impacts of drought. Mitigating drought involves a wide range of agricultural practices including finding additional water supplies and conserving water that is already available.

However, it is not enought to make drought plans based only on agricultural practices. There are many other strategies at government level that are just as important.

It is important to reliazethat we will not be able to defend drought overnight. Some of these strategies will take time to implement an d to see the result. We continually need to plan and to follow the plans in order to prevent drought from having devastating impact on life.

Strategies for mitigating drought :

The Crop based strategies for mitigating drought are:

• Land planning system
• Soil management techniques
• Crop management techniques
• Integrated watershed management
• Other water management technique
• Other practices

Land planning systems:

Some lands can only sustain limited cultivation because they are prone to drought. These are best used for alternate uses rather than normal food grain crops. Land-use systems give stability to dry land production systems and also make good use of the land and rainfall during the off-season.

Some exampls of alternate crops you can grow are:

• Growing of short duration legume crops.
• Establishing perennial grasses for livestock farming.
• Agroforestry or silvipasture practices.

Soil management techniques:

• Tillage during the off-season or in pre-rainy season, helps with rain water intake by breaking the hard soil and making the soil surface more permeable.
• This allows water to seep to the deeper soil layers and keeps the soil wet for longer time.
• The result is the soil will have more moisture during sowing the crop.
• Tillage also controls weeds which deplets the soil moisture.
• Offf-season tillage also destroyes the effs, cocoons and larvae of some pests by exposing them to the sun which otherwise affect the already stressed crop plants.

Crop management techniques:

Selection of Crops:

• Avoid growing of drought prone crops like maize, cotton etc.
• Growing drought resistant grain crops like sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet, fox tail millet etc.
• Growing drought resistant legume crops like pigeonpea, green gram, horse gram etc.
• Growing of oil seed crops like castor, sunflower, niger, sesame, safflower etc.

Crops like maize and cotton require assured rainfall even for giving normal yield. These crops have no capcity to recover from any moisture stress during their growing period. These crops also require higher nutrient application which means more monetary losses for the crop failure during dorught.

Sorghum is a good crop to grow in drought prone areas as it needs less water. It also provides grain for the family and fodder to the cattle. The crop also recovers fast from drought stress.

Figure: Sorghum Crop

Pearl millet is another good crop for drought prone aras. This crop requires less water than even sorghum. Pearl millet also provides grain as well as fodder.

Figure: Pearl millet crop

Pigeonpea or Red gram (Arhar) is a legume crop grown in dry lands becuase of its deep root system which can help utilizing moisture from lower depths in soil. Being a legume it can improve the soil quality by nitrogen fixation. It provides nutritious pulse to the farmers.

Using legumes :

Legumes like green gram, cowpea, horse gram etc. are also good choice of crops under limited moisture conditions. So, these crops suit well under drought conditions. These crops also provide nutritious pulse and also fodder for the cattle.

Selection of Oil seeds:

Oil seed crops like niger, sesame, safflower also can be grown under drought conditions.

Niger Crop	Sesame Crop

Intercropping practices:

Intercropping refers to growing more than one crop in the same land area in rows of definite proportion and pattern. Intercropping system provides insurance against total crop failure in dorught prone areas.

A few examples of suitable intercropping systems under drought are:

• Sorghum and Pigeonpea
• Pearl millet and Pigeonpea
• Pearl millet and Cowpea
• Sunflower and Horsegram

Plant Density:

• It is important to keep optimum plant population and row spacing. Generally wider plant spacing is preferred in drought prone areas.
• You must careful not to space the plants too widely. This will not use available soil moisture to the capacity.
• Remember that more plants do not necessarily means more yield. In dry lands more health plants needed for better yield.

Weed management :

• Weeds compete with crops for soil moisture and nutrients.
• Weeds also hosts some pests and diseases and these will migrate and affect the crops which are already under stress under drought conditions.

So, good weeed control from the early stages of crops is essential in drought areas.

Surface Mulching:

Surface mulching either by timely intercultivation or by covering the soil surface with plant residues benefits the crops

• Reduce water evaporation from soil
• Reduces water runoffs from the cropped fields.
• Help control weeds.
• Adds organic matter to the soil and imporves soil quality.

Integrated Nutrient Management (INM)

INM takes care of physical, chemical and biological needs of the soil. It meets the nutrient needs of the soil from the use of organic and inorganic fertilizers.

Benefits of INM:

• Increases water holding capacity of the soil.
• Increases the amount of nutrients in the soil.
• Make the soil more resistant to diseases.
• Make the soil better able to withstand drought.

Integrated Water Management (IWM):

IWM is the efficient way to continually manage land and water resouces in the drought prone areas. The focus of IWM is conservation and efficient way of using rain water. IWM combines several appraoaches to minimize the risk of drought.

These approaches are

• Soil and water conservation
• Rain water harvesting
• Efficient land and crop management

Other Water management techniques:

Every drop of water will make a difference during drought and so efficient conservation of rain water is key to mitigate drought. The different methods of conserving water are

• Building masonry storage tanks and broken embankments in community ponds and reservoirs
• Building earth percolation ponds and reservoirs
• Desilting all water storage structures.
• Building check dams.
• Rooftop rain water harvesting.

1.How much warning time do we have that an event will occur?

• Drought: Up to a year, but often no warning at all.
• Flood: from seconds to months
• Earthquake: Difficult to predict.

2.How long do the events last?

• Drought: months, years or decades
• Flood: from hours to weeks
• Earthquake: months

3.How often do the events occur?

• Drought: Each year, some part or other of the country has severe or extreme drought
• Flood: 2 out of 3 years mostly in northeast part of the country
• Earthquake: Not very frequently.

4.How many fatalities do this disaster usually cause every year?

• Drought: Rarely a direct cause of death. But, stress associated with drought events may contribute to some deaths.
• Flood: Causes few hundreads of death.
• Earthquake: For example, in lature district, maharastra, 7,928 people were killed in septemeber 1993

5.What are the average annual costs of this diaster?

• Drought: For example, regarding Maharashtra, the prime minister said that for 2003-04 the total assistance given to the state amounted to 700 crores.
• Flood: For example, Bihar state's official records reveal that Rs. 30 Crore was sanctioned for the purchase of food grain to be doled out to 2.11 crore people across 20 flooded districts.