Dhanpat Singh is a farmer in Alwar district, Rajasthan. His entire family is involved in agriculture. They have about four acres of land and their own borewell for irrigation. Initially they practiced flood irrigation, but due to the reducing groundwater, they began using micro irrigation, using turbo jet large sprinklers, which emitted large fountains of water. However in this case too, excess water was being used wastefully.
The CSR-supported development project, implemented by S M Sehgal Foundation, began its initiatives in August 2020. Dhanpat started attending the project’s meetings and trainings on agriculture. From here, in August 2021, they learned about mini sprinklers. Dhanpat opted for it, and was selected for participating in the project’s subsidized demonstration on mini sprinklers, for practically proving their effectiveness to the farmers of the village. In September 2021 alone, Dhanpat installed mini sprinklers in one acre of his land, where he planted carrot.
Earlier he had cultivated carrot, which was watered by a large sprinkler. In that case, the yield from one acre of land had been about 29 quintals, which had earned him about INR 33,000. When he used mini sprinklers on the same 1 acre of land, he yielded about 34 quintals, from which he earned about INR 51,000. Thus he made a profit of INR 18,000.
In addition, in the case of a large sprinkler, about 1,600 liters of water was dispensed from its nozzle in one hour, which irrigates an area of about 150 square meters, and has the added inconvenience of requiring repeated manual changing of its position to water the entire field. With mini sprinklers, about 1,600 liters of water irrigate 300 square meters in one hour. This saves the precious and depleting water resource. After setting up the mini sprinklers in the field once, there is no need to move it to water other areas of the field.
Dhanpat shares information with other farmers on the benefits he has accrued by adopting mini sprinklers. Upon hearing this and observing Dhanpat’s field, other farmers have shifted their irrigation practice in favor of mini sprinklers. Dhanpat says, “Mini sprinklers save water in view of the falling groundwater level, and have also increased my crop yield. Introducing this implement is a commendable effort. I thank the organizations for their initiatives and for selecting my village for conducting the development project.”
Author: Rahul Kumar Gupta
(Rahul is field assistant, Alwar, Rajasthan)
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