Dr. Sono Khangarani, the entrepreneur behind MicroDrip, works to market and distribute drip irrigation systems to poor farmers in the Tharparkar desert.
The Challenge
- In Pakistan's Tharparkar desert - part of the Sindh Province - 80 percent of region's farmers live on less than $1 a day; Thar is one of the most food- and income-insecure regions in the country.
- In Tharparkar, poverty levels are directly correlated to one's access to water. The region's endemic poverty is exacerbated by prolonged spells of drought and erratic precipitation patterns.
- Lack of access to water and prolonged drought force smallholder farmers off their land in search of alternate sources of income and lead to increased rural-urban migration. This constant uprooting and dislocation carries negative economic as well as social impact.
- To address both economic and food insecurity, there is a need for affordable, efficient irrigation solutions targeted to the needs of low-income farmers.
The Innovation
- Acumen Fund has partnered with Thardeep Rural Development Program, a rural development non-profit in Pakistan, to enable a technology transfer of low-cost, high-efficiency drip irrigation technologies from GEWP, an Acumen Fund India investee.
- Thardeep, with support from Acumen, has set up a for-profit drip irrigation company – Micro Drip – which procures drip systems from India. Micro Drip then markets the systems to poor farmers in Thardeep's network of 3,000 villages, with plans to expand to other water scarce regions in Pakistan.
The Impact
- The distribution and use of Micro Drip's systems will enable farmers to become more economically secure and reduce dependence on rain-fed farming.
- Drip irrigation systems reduce the amount of irrigation water needed to cultivate an acre of land by 50 percent, enabling farmers to cultivate more land and extract higher yields at a lower cost.
- Year-round farming – enabled by irrigation – means that farmers do not have to uproot their families and migrate to cities during the dry season.
- Micro Drip plans to reach 20,000 farmers over the course of 5 years, resulting in increased incomes and more stable food supplies.