Sustainable Energy Irrigation Solutions for Marginal Farmers in Rajasthan | Join the Impact

Are you a development sector professional? Interested to have intervention in clean energy projects? Looking for sustainable agriculture practices for Marginal Farmers? Looking for projects with a potential to meet multiple SDGs? This project concept is then for you. We can further communicate to take it forward.

The key problem is the need for an efficient and sustainable energy access for irrigation in lieu of diesel engine-based irrigation.

The interesting aspect is that water is available in the area throughout the year. The farmers need to use diesel engines for irrigation purposes which is eating away their earnings out of farming. There is also drudgery for transporting the diesel oil from a distant place of 10 to 15 kms, incurring the annual maintenance expenses and wasting of some oil while transporting and handling. Besides the farmers waste a lot of precious time in all these activities.

The climate benefits as well as more income earnings for the farmers are possible when proper intervention will be undertaken.

This article reflects the present situation and the next part will be published once the farmers will have better solution.

The village is on the south- east side of the state Rajasthan and around 200 km from the state capital Jaipur. The part of the village has no access to electricity. The water stream as well as wells are available to lift water and water remains available throughout the year. The diesel engines of capacity 10 to 12 hp are used to irrigate the fields. It is noted that around Rs.2000/- is spent for irrigating per hectare thereby the farmers are spending around ₹10,000 per hectare per season on irrigation. The land is fertile and crops like wheat, paddy, mustard, maize, mung bean, etc. are cultivated.

The area belongs to 12-15 farmers with a land holding of 0.7 hectare each. Being marginal farmers and not earning sufficiently from farming, they are not in a position to invest on any alternative energy sources like Solar PV Irrigation system. There is also possibility of increasing the overall efficiency of the irrigation system.  At present around 15 Diesel engine-based pumps are in usages.

 The marginal farmers are the most interesting aspect of this irrigation project concept for access to reliable, low-cost energy (although solar pumps do not have any fuel cost but a minimum operation and maintenance cost may be there). The importance of the marginal farmers lies with the fact that 84 percent of the marginal farmers in spite of low profits and natural calamities are not willing to quit farming, and are not interested in selling off their land to pursue other economic activities as the study, titled ‘Annual Survey of State of Marginal Farmers in India’, highlights.

Whereas a diesel-based irrigation system uses a diesel engine to power a pump that moves water from a source to an irrigation system. The engine burns diesel fuel to generate power, which is not only highly polluting but also mostly imported.

Would you like to be part of this project under #CSR, #research, #carboncredit, #decarbonisation, #netzero or as an #NGO or #Foundation? There are more locations with similar intervention possibility,

 Please communicate with us at solarpost@solarpost.in or WhatsApp at +91-9811456950.