An investigation to assess the impact of Ghataprabha-Malaprabha Irrigation Project on cropping pattern and food consumption basket was undertaken. The study in six villages of Malaprabha – Ghataprabha area and two villages of non – command area involving randomly selected 384: command area and 384: non – command area respondents. Primary data was collected by interviewing the respondents. The overall result revealed that introduction of irrigation envisaged shift in cropping pattern, which leads to reduction in nutria-cereals, pulses and increase in the production of commercial crops such as sugarcane (383 %) and cotton (250 %). Decrease in the production of bajra (90.01% and 75.5%) was recorded in both the command areas. The production and area under pulses decreased tremendously (76% and 77%, respectively) in Ghataprabha, as a result of introduction of irrigation.
The farmers of command area produced significantly higher proportion of cereals (945.34 g/day) compared to non-command area counterparts (743.65 g/day), this production was mainly contributed by maize a commercial cereal crop and dicoccum wheat. However, only 10 and 9 per cent was utilized for self consumption by large farmers of command and non – command area respectively. None of the farmers from command area, produced staple cereals like jowar and small millets. On the contrary, the farmers of non-command area were involved in the production of staple cereals like jowar and wheat and 53.57 per cent and 33.88 per cent of it was utilized for domestic consumption respectively by non command area farmers.