Can Drip Irrigation Method Doubling the Farmers Income? Evidence of Banana Crop Cultivation from Tamil Nadu

India is one of the world’s highest producers in agricultural products, including food grains, fruits,
vegetables and milk etc. Irrigation contributes the major role in the sustainable agricultural growth in
India. The inadequate of future water storage in addition to the raising demand for consumption of water
for various purposes, this situation has become urgent need to adopt new irrigation technology for avoid
the water scarcity in the future. One such a method introducing in water management is drip method
irrigation. Numbers of studies are available related to use of farm level survey data all over the state
have confirmed that the saving of water consumption of different horticultural crops cultivated under
drip irrigated method is highly significant as contrast to conventional irrigated method. However, many
studies are not discussed detail on fruit banana cultivation in farm survey data particularly in the Indian
circumstances. As a result of previous study, a special effort made in this analysis to bridge this space
using farm survey data collected from different villages in Sivagangai district of Tamil Nadu State. The
result of analysis clearly suggests that the consumption of water have been reduced due to the adoption
of drip irrigated method in Banana crop is evaluated to be 52% higher than the conventional irrigation of
Banana crop cultivation. Increased Productivity due to drip irrigated method in Banana crop cultivation is
8.11% higher than the conventional irrigation of Banana crop cultivation. The BCR drip irrigated method
in Banana crop cultivation is 24.33 percent with subsidy and 10.58 percent without subsidy. The study
has proved from the use of drip irrigated method contributes to reduce water consumption, decrease the
cost of banana crop cultivation and raise the banana crop yield in contrast to conventional irrigation in
Sivagangai district from Tamil Nadu State. The field survey study suggested that most of the farmers are
not aware of the drip technology is useful for cultivating various horticultural crops. Therefore, needs
to put some additional efforts to raise the use of drip irrigated method in all suitable crops to conserve
water and to raise the performance of agriculture.