LASER Land Leveling Technology

Precision Land Levelling (PLL) is a mechanical process of grading and smoothing the land to a precise and uniform plane surface at grade or no grade (zero slope) with variation of less than ± 2cm. It is carried out to control irrigation application losses at the farmers’ fields besides other benefits.

LASER technology has been proved to be beneficial as it minimizes the cost of irrigation operation, ensures better degree of accuracy in much lesser time, saves irrigation water, ascertains uniform seed germination, increases fertilizer use efficiency and resultantly enhances crop yields. Impact studies on LASER land leveling reveal that it:

• Curtails the irrigation application losses up to the extent of 25%
• Reduces labour requirements for irrigation by about 35%
• Enhances the irrigated area by about 2% by brining the number as well as length of field ditches and dikes to a minimum
• Increases the crop yields by about 20%

Pakistan is considered to be the pioneer in South Asia for promoting use of LASER technology in irrigated agriculture. First LASER leveling equipment was tested by OFWM Punjab in 1985. Before devolution, there were 140 LASER land leveling units available with Distrct Governments which have been procured through donor assisted projects, respectively. One hundred units were equipped with tractors whereas 40 units were without tractors. These machines have precisely leveled about 125,000 acres of land. The yearly potential of available LASER equipment was about 25,000 acres/year. The major operational constraint encountered to make adequate use of this equipment was insufficient availability of O&M funds with the public sector.

Considering the benefits of the technology, Government of the Punjab, Pakistan has promoted this technology as strategy for efficient utilization of available water resources for agriculture. A project “Strengthening of LASER Land Leveling Services in the Punjab” has been launched for enhancement of water productivity at field level through expansion in LASER land leveling services in the province with public private partnership (download brochure). Under this project 2,500 LASER units are being provided to the farmers/service providers to make availability of at least one LASER unit in each rural union council of the province at a total cost of Rs. 859.68 million within three years (2005-06 to 2007-08). The scheme also envisages capacity building of 2,500 LASER operators in operation, maintenance and trouble shooting. this can be used a role model by other countries of the south Asia.