Low cost drip irrigation as a poverty reduction tool
Fall 2006
By A. Sadangi
Produced by: Global Development Network (GDN), 2005
This project was submitted for the Global Development Awards: Most Innovative Development Project Competition 2005.
India faces extreme water scarcity across large and highly populated regions, and smallholders and their families face extreme poverty and income insecurity due to this water scarcity and due to poor irrigation methods. They cannot afford modern irrigation devices so they experience low crop yields and sustained poverty. A significant social problem appears because the micro-irrigation products have not been targeted to the very poor, or been designed to be low cost, so have been unaffordable to most small farmers.
IDE India has developed an affordable micro-drip irrigation technology that makes efficient and high yield irrigation accessible to small land holders by bringing the price down by 60 to 80 percent, assuring that even small-scale farmers in arid regions of India can use the scarce water resources available to get out of poverty and meet their family's basic economic and nutritional needs.
