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Micro Drip

Affordable Drip Irrigation for Farmers in Pakistan

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Dr. Sono Khangarani of Micro Drip talks with farmers and staff in the Tharparkar desert, where water is scarce and drip irrigation can greatly enhance productivity.

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SNAPSHOT
    Micro Drip markets and distributes affordable drip irrigation technology in Pakistan. Its systems reduce the amount of water smallholder farmers need to cultivate an acre of land by 50 percent, improve yields by 40 percent, and lower input costs by 30 percent. And, because they allow for year-round farming, fewer farmers and their families are forced to migrate during the dry season. Micro Drip has already reached more than 3,000 farmers, and over the next five years has the potential to impact 20,000+ farmers.
The Challenge
  • In Pakistan, 120 million people directly depend on agriculture to survive. Yet modern irrigation technologies cater to farmers with large fields, leaving smallholder farmers to rely on flood irrigation – an inefficient use of water resources that does not maximize crop yields – or on expensive and polluting diesel pumps.
  • The share of water available for agriculture is declining fast, and smallholder farmers are the first to be affected. Lack of access to water forces these farmers off their land in search of alternate sources of income and leads to increased rural-urban migration.
The Innovation
  • Micro Drip’s affordable drip irrigation systems deliver water directly to the root of the plant – maximizing plant growth, ensuring major input cost and water savings, and improving farm yields. Micro Drip is the result of collaboration between Acumen Fund, Thardeep Rural Development Programme and Unilever Pakistan.
  • Acumen Fund played a critical role in transferring the irrigation technology from IDEI-India and Global Easy Water Products (GEWP), Acumen investees in India. Micro Drop has since expanded into Punjab, where it is partnering with National Rural Support Programme, a rural development non-profit, to market and sell the systems to smallholder farmers.
The Impact
  • Micro Drip’s irrigation systems reduce the amount of water needed to cultivate an acre of land by 50 percent, and have been shown to improve yields by more than 40 percent and offer input cost savings of about 30 percent. They also allow for year-round farming, which means that farmers don’t have to uproot families and migrate to cities during the dry season. The overall result: reduced dependence on flood irrigation and the opportunity for farmers to earn steadier incomes.
  • The company has reached approximately 3,000 rural households since mid-2009 and has the potential to reach 20,000 farmers over the next five years.