Pump sets, irrigation and human power

Written by Anna da Costa / 22 December 2008 / Read Anna da Costa's latest blog entries.

Water and energy are as closely linked as night and day, but we rarely realise it.

Concurrent with our energy crisis, a freshwater crisis looms, a silent and frightening spectre that threatens all life through its absent reality. But how are the two connected?

Every time we use water, energy has without doubt been used to put it there, in the form we find it. Sometimes, this energy will have come from the Earth's natural and renewable cycles, that for example transport water in giant convection currents across the atmosphere and seas driven by the energy of the sun, and that purify it through the activities of plants and bacteria, but most of the time these days, it's come from energy that we generate in centralised or decentralised power plants.

Indeed, by the time water reaches you, it has normally been collected (possibly in a dam), treated (to remove impurities and sediments), transported (from the point of collection to point of use), and often packaged (in a plastic bottle) and/or pumped (from ground levels). Each of these processes, especially transport, require a large amount of energy.

As a climate solution, would you have placed low energy water systems such as pumps and irrigators high on your list?

Here's a stunner. 'Irrigation is the largest consumer of energy in agriculture, and agriculture accounts for 40-50% of India's energy use'

As we all collect solutions to take with us on the tour, I've been travelling around Delhi to meet people working in the field who can tell us about their solutions. Last week, International Development Enterprises India (IDEI) was on the hit list, and what incredible work they are doing!

IDEI are a non-profit NGO in India that provide long-term solutions to poverty, hunger and malnutrition with the aim of stimulating a sustainable and free market by creating demand for affordable technologies and ensuring a sustainable supply chain. In the realm of water and energy, they work to develop, design and test low cost, low energy irrigation systems and treadle pumps, for the upliftment of India's poorest farmers.

Kapil Singla, an IDEI Agricultural Engineer, was kind enough to show me around their testing and development site in South Delhi, explaining as we went.

'80-85% of water utilisation in India is from agriculture, with irrigation also being the largest consumer of agricultural energy. This is no small sum, given that agriculture accounts for 40-50% of India's energy use', Kapil said, as we walked around the development site, with sprawling lush lawns and lines of brightly coloured crops that reached into the distance. Agricultural water use therefore not only serious implications for India's increasingly erratic and dwindling water supply, but also for its carbon footprint.

I asked Kapil what he felt were the most significant drivers of this energy consumption... was it large scale agriculture, with massive machinery and irrigators? Surely small-scale farmers didn't consume so much?

I was surprised by Kapil's answer. As it happens, 'only 10% of farmers have large fields. The rest are small scale farmers, accounting for 70% of India's agricultural land.' These farmers are often forced to club together to loan the use of tractors and large diesel-powered electric water pumps, for the simple reason that there is often little alternative. As such, the main drivers are (1) the use of these diesel powered electric pumps to draw water and irrigate, (2) the use of tractors to plough, and (3) the construction and maintenance of dams upstream to capture and store this water in the first place.

Bearing this in mind it is absolutely essential that the amount of water used to irrigate, and the energy that this takes is minimised, should we address climate change.

IDEI have solutions at least to the first and third problem, and many of them. They have developed human/gravity-powered irrigators, water storage systems and treadle pumps that consume no electrical power, use far less water than current irrigators (hence requiring less storage to start with), and are most importantly simple, low cost and user friendly.

They were beautiful to see. Nestling amongst the beds of cabbages, standing adjacent to patches of corn, and towering over newly ploughed beds of soil were a whole host of different pumps and irrigators, designed to draw water from different surface and underground sources, and to irrigate crops in different ways, both by drip and sprinkling. Each seemed so amazingly simple in its design and operation, and to work with the laws of physics to maximise the output for any given energy input. Furthermore, Kapil and his team were developing options for a great number of low cost brackets and water supply variations.

The problem with addressing this, Kapil said, has been both availability of and access to this technology, as well as capacity building with farmers around how to use it, but this is changing....

IDEI is now working in 15 of India's least developed states. They partner with authorised for-profit distributors of the products such as GEWP and a great number of individuals to market and distribute the products they create at low costs to farmers across India.  As an aside, this is an operational model that I am coming across increasingly, and seems to work incredibly well; a not-for-profit/for-profit partnership.

As far as the other sources of energy use (from tractor ploughing and water storage upstream), Kapil said that in addition to IDEI's solutions, there is a lot that could be addressed through a return to the use of animal draught (especially for small-scale farmers) as well as localised rainwater harvesting, around which India has a huge amount of indigenous knowledge.

There are other agricultural emission sources too, for example the extensive application of artificial fertilisers and slash and burn field clearing practices, but India could be poised to address these. With more than 70% of India's farmers working at a small scale, many argue for the appropriateness of a more decentralised and localised model of food production and supply rather than a push towards mass production models. Encouraging such a shift alongside more traditional agricultural practices that replenish rather than deplete the soil could mean fewer fertilisers would be required and productivity could be increased.

Indeed, studies have shown that biodiverse (mixed crop) farming can provide more productivity per hectare in the long term than monocultures, as each variety of plant draws on and replenishes different soil nutrients. Additional crop management techniques such as crop rotation can minimise the need for artificial fertilisers significantly. Each of these traditional farming methods, it has been argued, could address some of these additional emission sources - providing a more sustainable and resilient source of income and livelihood. And this is a crucial point.

Coming back to IDEI's solutions, most importantly, they are not only climate solutions. They are development solutions; empowering farmers to have better management and control over their water supplies, and energy needs, and weakening their reliance on the costly power supplies and equipment, through giving them affordable and workable options that ultimately lead them to a more sustainable livelihood.

For more information on IDEI, please see their website: http://www.ide-india.org/ide/index1.shtml