Economic Opportunity Mailing List Archive

["Elisabeth Katz" <<address removed>>]

This is some complementation to Andy Bullock's success stories from improved
small-scale water control.

Treadle pumps and more recently low cost drip irrigation technologies have
allowed many poor farmers mainly in South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Nepal) to
improve their livelihood security substantially. IDE (International
Development Enterprises) - an NGO - has been and is a leading actor in the
development and spread of these technologies. Their key to success is that
they do not only develop useful technologies with a radical cost cutting
strategy to make them affordable also for poor people, but invest in
developing markets for these technologies (i.e. promote supply and demand,
if necessary encourage manufacturers and dealers, promote the technology
with small farmers etc.) because only when a useful technology can be bought
in the nearby bazaar at low cost it becomes accessible to larger numbers of
people. Studies on the impact of treadle pumps on livelihoods revealed that
most farmers using it make maybe an additional 100$ with it per year, while
a small number makes upto 500$. This led to the insight that facilitation of
higher value production and access to profitable markets together with water
control enhances the positive impact of the new affordable technologies (of
course considerations about possible risks due to more dependency on markets
have to be incorporated into the respective strategies).

Low-cost drip irrigation, treadle pumps etc. are now increasingly taken up
in other countries too.

For more information on low cost water control technologies and on the
market creation approach to disseminate them visit the website
www.siminet.org, and/or the websites of the organisations with links on the
SIMInet site.

With best regards
Elisabeth Katz

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Swiss Centre for Agricultural Extension and Rural Development
Department for International Cooperation
Eschikon 28
8315 Lindau (Switzerland)
Ph. 0041-52-354 97 35
Fax  .... 354 97 97
<address removed>
www.lbl.ch/int
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