Farmers shun borewells for wells

Wanaparthy: The farmers in Veepanagandla and surrounding regions of Wanaparthy district are preferring to dig wells instead of borewells as they have finding wells more economical and also successfully yielding good amounts of groundwater for irrigating their crops. 

In fact, the areas of Veepanagandla mandal and surrounding villages are the low-lying areas where the Krishna River trails about 2-3 kilometers away and there are a large number of smaller rivulets that take the water from the upper catchment areas into the river.

However, the upper reaches of the Krishna River where there are a large number of farmers who were sowing various crops were earlier dependent up on borewells to irrigate their crops a few years ago. But it has been found in the recent years, the borewells dug have been drying up and even though the villagers had dug borewells as deep as 300 to 600 feet there was no water available in the ground. 

Earlier, with many villagers and farmers fed up digging borewells and incurred huge losses as they had to borrow money from others to dig the borewells, not able to repay the debts, some the farmers even left their villages and migrated to bigger cities in search of livelihood and to clear their debts. 

However, of late, about two years ago some farmers from Sampatraopally village of Veepanagandla mandal have observed a peculiar thing in the ground that when they dug open wells just 25-30 feet deep, they found good source of water emerging out from these open wells.

So majority farmers took to digging up of open wells which attracted more and more farmers from the village to opt for the same. They even used heavy earth digging machines and dug open wells which yielded them good water source as against the borewells. 

“Earlier I had dug five borewells as deep as 250-300 feet, but could not find any water traces in them. After learning that some farmers in Sampatraopally have taken up to the old way of digging open wells, I had also dug an open a well, which paid fruits.

Now I am getting good amounts of water from the open well and using which, I have sown groundnut in six acres,” said Banavath Narasimha, a farmer from Korlakunta village of Veepanagandla mandal. There are many such farmers like Narasimha, who are now following the suite and opting for plantation crops like mango, papaya, sapota and during rainy season they are either sowing groundnut or paddy when the water source 
is good. 

When contacted the experts of groundwater resources from Wanaparthy, they explained that in and around the river basins, the ground water is available only at 30-40 feet deep and there would be no ground water available beyond this depth because the entire earth’s crust under the river and its surrounding areas is built of rocks.  And they have even advising the farmers living in and around the river basis not to go for borewells rather dig open wells which will be more resourceful for them.