About Powering Agriculture
Powering Agriculture: An Energy Grand Challenge for Development supports the development and deployment of clean energy innovations that increase agriculture productivity and stimulate low carbon economic growth in the agriculture sector of developing countries to help end extreme poverty and extreme hunger.
Globally, more than 800 million farmers manually lift and haul water to irrigate their farmland. iDE’s Clean Irrigation Solution can run on a variety of power sources—solar steam power, photovoltaic power, and grid-connected AC where available, to access groundwater from deeper depths than conventional pumps, and maintains a slow, steady discharge rate.
iDE has, in recent weeks, installed the first round of pumps in Nepal for field trials. The field-testing is important because it gives farmers a chance to see the technology, understand how it works and provide their feedback.
‘When women benefit from irrigation technologies, this can lead to improved household nutrition and health’, Elizabeth Bryan and Hagar ElDidi, IFPRI.
In cooperation with University of Ostfalia in Germany, GIZ has developed an e-learning course on Solar Powered Irrigation Systems. The course will increase knowledge and understanding of SPIS technologies and their adaptability to a variety of farming, cropping, and irrigation systems. The free online course will run June18-July 30, 2019. Registration closes on May 30, 2019.
iDE uses a market-based approach to make technologies for better agriculture more readily available to farmers in developing countries. A great example is Powering Agriculture Innovator Futurepump, a business that iDE helped create. Their Sunflower Pump is successful in several developing markets.
