Treadle Pumps: Eco friendly and effective way of pumping water
Farmers in India heavily rely on monsoon for agriculture and can grow only a single crop in a year. Outside the monsoon season, farmers are deprived of an income unless they irrigate the land from groundwater or find work in urban areas. Ground water is available just a few meters under ground in states like West Bengal. The challenge here is not in finding the water but in pumping and watering the crops. Poor farmers cannot afford to buy or rent water pumps and hence manually water the plants. Manually watering the plants is not only back breaking but also inefficient. Treadle Pumps are a boon in such conditions. A Treadle Pump is a human operated pump used to pump water from a depth of few meters and from lakes and rivers.
The cost of owning and maintaining a Treadle Pump is less than half of the cost for diesel pumps. International Development Enterprises India is a prominent nonprofit organization helping farmers to adopt Treadle Pumps (IDEI). IDEI has sold more than 750,000 Krishak Bandhu (farmer’s friend) Treadle Pumps till date and has positively affected more than 3 million people. IDEI also has other programs such as Affordable Drip Irrigation Technology Intervention (ADITI) Program to help farmers living in water scarce regions.
Photo taken from the Ashden Awards website
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Treadle Pumps.jpg | 14.58 KB |
Comments
Pingback
[...] new waves of innovation in the social sector. We’ve seen a lot of exciting new products targeting base-of-pyramid customers and original business models for delivering these innovations to communities. Despite these [...]
Pingback
[...] Treadle Pumps: Eco friendly and effective way of pumping water tech.ashoka.org/treadle_pumps – view page – cached Farmers in India heavily rely on monsoon for agriculture and can grow only a single crop in a year. Outside the monsoon season, farmers are deprived of an income unless they irrigate the land from... Read moreFarmers in India heavily rely on monsoon for agriculture and can grow only a single crop in a year. Outside the monsoon season, farmers are deprived of an income unless they irrigate the land from groundwater or find work in urban areas. Ground water is Read less [...]