Locally produced irrigation systems

Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Hamzah M's first success was his invention of a simple drip irrigation gadget and, subsequently, its transformation into a powerful development tool. He discovered that local materials, including clay and rice husks, could be processed into crude ceramic knobs that allow water to drip at a regulated pace. Called "emitters" in irrigation parlance, these instruments, when attached to discarded water bottles, can be fashioned into an effective drip irrigation system. The result is a locally produced irrigation system that can be manufactured and sold at one-tenth of the cost of comparable systems. The emitter components themselves are produced by the group of over 100 craftspeople living in the Bima region of Sumbawa Island trained and facilitated by Hamzah. He has developed the emitter to act not just as a form of drip irrigation for water, but he has also developed methods to produce plant nutrients that are totally organic and support plant productivity. Recently, Hamzah’s technology has found its application in mitigating the environmental impact of the mining of the PT Newmont, a large gold mining company from the US.
  
Farmers are now finding that they are able to reliably grow crops that they have been unable to grow in the past. The efficiency of water use can be increased by up to 90 percent, because the water goes directly to the root zones of plants with little lost to evaporation. For the first time, farmers are achieving success in producing tomatoes and chilies as quick-growing crops and can produce healthy saplings for cashew, mango, and teak trees. Working at a modest pace, farmers are able to generate new cash income, which they are encouraged to reinvest in production at a larger scale. Because the technology is so versatile and needs are so great, farmers can apply the technology in a variety of ways: for subsistence, to deal with their own food security; for cash-cropping, to earn more money; and for systematic growth in their own productivity, to recover unused or misused farmlands in a sustainable and environmentally healthy way.

Hamzah recognizes the need to put viable technologies into the able hands of people who have a stake in their success. Hamzah has continued to spread his emitter technology to farmers’ groups, citizen organizations, government agencies, and companies.  He is raising agricultural productivity in Indonesia's driest lands through the combination of sustainable technologies, farmer cooperatives, and the development of new farm products and markets. Hamzah is driven by a simple insight into the nature of the problems that face the rural people with whom he works. His position is to access maximum benefit from the resources already available as a more practical and sustainable approach. His life's work is a continual effort to strengthen agriculture through people's ownership and management of appropriate technology.

Picture credit:http://www.flickr.com/photos/seandreilinger/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0