There are many methods to harvest rainwater. For ex. Lakes, bunds, pits, tanks, wells, channels, etc. But still we are facing scarcity of ground water. Here are some reasons. Frequent pumping of water without recharging it. Using more and more water In agriculture without knowing the requirement of the crops. Due to sudden climatic changes, floods, destroying the bunds, tanks, wells, etc. and cutting the tress in forest area and as well in agri fields has cause the damage. And many more reasons the ground water level has receded to a depth of thousands of feet in 80% of agriculture land.
The challenge is how to rise the ground water level. To take up this challenge in Food Forest concept we are adopting a technique called “Trenches” these trenches seems like an oasis in the desert.
Method of making Trenches.
In an acre of land, trenches should be done against to the water slope with 3ft wider and 1.5ft deeper from one corner of the land to another corner of the land. And the distance between one trench to another should be 15ft. around 10 trenches can be made in an acre.
Even in 300 mm rainfall area, these 10 trenches will store 4-5 lac liters of rain water every year. Either we can store this water by making water storage tank or we can recharge the ground level.
In India around 1.78 million square kilometers of land is using for agriculture. out of this around 70% of it is dry land. By adopting 10 trenches in a acre, the total amount of water stored in agriculture land is enormous. This will increase the ground water level. This will not dry up wells. Will not have scarcity of drinking water. Even we can develop Food Forest in dry lands by using very minimum water.
