MANILA, Philippines -- For 12 days starting last June 25, we had the good fortune of witnessing the transformation of even virtual wastelands into productive farms in India through the miracle of drip irrigation.

This was upon the invitation of the world’s second biggest irrigation company (biggest in India), the Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd.(JISL), based in Jalgaon, Maharashtra state. We visited farms of small farmers who have been benefiting most from the drip irrigation technology. Of course, the big farms are also beneficiaries of the same.

The drip irrigation technology was popularized in India by Bhavarlal Jain, now going on 74, a visionary who is obsessed in improving the lives of small farmers through the adoption of improved techniques that are sustainable and beneficial to the environment.

Drip irrigation was earlier popularized by Israelis who had to contend with scarce water supplies and poor soil. The Israelis had also attempted to introduce the technology in India but were not successful. It was Jain who persevered to introduce the system as a concept, not just selling the hardware. The technology is packaged in such a way that the farmers are taught to make proper use of the irrigation system. The technicians of the irrigation company had to study the resources of the farmers, the kind of soil, the weather that prevails in each area, the microbial population of the soil, topography of the land and other aspects of farming. That’s one way of ensuring the farmers to succeed in producing higher yields at reduced cost in the long run.

Mr. Jain saw the advantage of developing the micro irrigation or drip system. For one, it saves as much as 70 percent of the water used. That’s because the water is supplied by drip lines to the roots of the plants in small drops. That way, the soil is not waterlogged and the roots are aerated with oxygen which makes the plants grow better.

The plants are also fertilized through the drip system. This means that the fertilizer is applied where it is best utilized by the plants. Wastage of fertilizer is greatly minimized. The farmer thus saves also on fertilizer.

Also, labor in fertilizing and watering is greatly reduced. With drip irrigation, even lands with undulating terrain can be made productive. Then there are other benefits from drip irrigation. Drip irrigated crops usually mature earlier. For instance, in the case of tissue-cultured banana, the drip irrigated plants are harvested two or three months earlier than the ones that did not receive drip irrigation. The harvests are also usually with better quality because they are adequately nourished.

While there are obvious benefits from drip irrigation, selling the idea was not easy, especially to the small farmers who don’t have much capital. Drip irrigation entails a relatively high cost because of the drip lines that have to be installed beside the plant rows. Many farmers were skeptical about the small drops of water that are applied to the plants. That’s because they were used to flooding as their means of irrigation.

However, once the results are seen by the farmers and the farmers who adopted the technology make money, the rest of the farmers in the community will readily adopt the system.

Like for instance in a community in Jalgaon where Neri Jamner plants cotton and at the same time distrib-utes the drip tubings and attachments. He remembers that when he planted cotton and did not irrigate at all, he harvested only 800 kilos per hectare. Then when the cotton was irrigated by means of flooding, the harvest could reach 2,000 kilos. With drip irrigation, the yield could reach 4,000 kilos per hectare.

The drip system really makes cotton farming profitable because of the high yield. The total cost of producing cotton through drip irrigation, according to Neri Jamner, is 50,000 rupees (that’s also P50,000 in Philippine money). Since one kilo sells for 25 rupees, the profit is substantial. If the farmer produces 4,000 kilos in a hectare, he could make a profit of 150,000 rupees. And that’s the reason why in the community of Neri Jamner, practically all the cotton farmers have adopted the drip irrigation technology.

During 2001, the first year that drip irrigation was introduced in Jamner’s place, there were only 10 to 20 farmers planting one hectare each who were convinced to use drip irrigation in their cotton farms. By 2005, 300 to 400 hectares were covered by drip irrigation. Today, the area covered is 20,000 hectares.

The same is true in the banana growing area in Waghoda in the district of Jalgaon where D.K. Mhajamam, 63, plants 20 hectares to banana and at the same time engages in trading. He buys the harvests of the other farmers in the community and sends them to New Delhi by train. Every four days, he ships 750 tons of bananas to the capital city.

The Waghoda farmers who grow bananas on 25,000 hectares readily saw the benefits of drip irrigation because the yields increased tremendously. When the farmers were planting bananas that were not tissue-cultured and without any irrigation, the fruit bunch weighed only an average of 13 kilos. Now, with tissue-cultured planting materials that are drip-irrigated but not fertigated, the fruit bunch became bigger, weighing an average of 20 kilos each. With drip irrigation and fertigation, the fruit bunch attained an average weight of 30 kilos each.

Aside from the bigger bunches, the tissue-cultured planting materials that were fertigated were harvestable two to three months earlier than those not drip-irrigated.

By the way, the Jain Group also produces tissue-cultured planting materials of banana and other crops. The company has developed its own banana variety derived from the Grand Nain from Costa Rica. The company has a modern tissue culture laboratory that is perhaps the biggest in the world as far as banana is concerned. This year, it expects to release 30 million tissue-cultured plantlets. The target in the near future is to do 50 million.

Sugarcane is another big user of drip irrigation in India. That’s because the planters also realize the many advantages of the technology. Besides increasing yields, the drip-irrigated sugarcane can be harvested one or two months earlier. Watch for other agriculture developments in India in our future columns and articles in the different publications of Manila Bulletin.