A LOW-COST DRIP IRRIGATION SYSTEM FOR SMALL FARMERS IN DEVELOPING-COUNTRIES

In areas where water is scarce, drip irrigation provides the most effi cient way to conserve irrigation water, but its cost of $1000 an acre is prohibitive for most small farmers in developing countries. The cos t was reduced by 90 percent by (1) making dripper lines moveable, so t hat each line reaches ten rows instead of one; (2) replacing 25-cent e mitters with simple 0.70 mm holes punched by a heated needle; and (3) using $3.00 off-the-shelf 20 liter containers with cloth filters in pl ace of expensive filter systems. This reduced the cost of a half-acre system to $50. The low cost system was field tested in the hill areas of Nepal, and in mulberry cultivation in Andhra Pradesh, India. Unifor mity of flow from emitters was 73-84 percent. Small farmers reported t hat the low cost trickle irrigation system cut labor requirements in h alf, and doubled the area irrigated by the same amount of water. The l ow cost drip system is likely to be widely adopted by small farmers in semi-arid and hilly regions.