Team members:
Ahsan Ali
Akshay Bhagwatwar
Penelope Stanton
Tony Jiandong Hu
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We have developed a prize intended to incent innovation which will drastically improve the irrigation efficiency of the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) of South Asia. The region’s agriculture feeds 20% of the world’s population. With a plummeting water table and droughts of increasing frequency and severity, there is a pressing need for more efficient use of water. We have focused on the rice-wheat crop rotation. It is the region’s primary farming practice and is extremely water intensive. The two irrigation sources are canal water and tube wells. Farmers have no control over the availability of the canal water, it is infrequent and irregular. This creates an over-dependence on tube wells, which is depleting the water table. If control over access to canal water were decentralized and given to individual farmers and farming communities, it could be applied in a precise watering schedule dictated by best practices. This would not only drastically improve water efficiency, it would also increase crop yield.
The prize will be awarded to a system that can effectively collect and store a large amount of water from a canal in the periods which it is available, and deliver it to farms as it is needed. This would allow farmers to use a more frequent and conservative water schedule. Currently, if farmers have access to canal water (the upstream dam is open), they water their fields far beyond their needs due to uncertainty of future availability. Giving them the power to use it as they need it will promote implementation of best practices in agriculture. It will reverse the trend of the depleting water table, and provide a greater supply of canal water to farmers in the regions further downstream.
video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok9JhOrn7GI
