Transforming Farming into an aspirational Job

Challenge: Transforming Farming into an aspirational Job for vulnerable farmers

Forty years since India gained independence, what has really changed for the farmers of today? During this crucial post-independence period, agriculture contributed 45 per cent of the country’s GDP, employing the majority of Indian workers. Today None from new generation want to adopt this service even if it is the life preserving service on earth. Meanwhile an emboldened risk is making farmer livelihoods more precarious. Climate has always played havoc with the lives of farmers, and it has increasingly become more unpredictable. The country faces increasingly extreme weather conditions such as severe droughts and floods. This is hampering farmers’ production capacity, and impacting their livelihoods. Can science and innovation help here too? All while increasing farmers’ incomes?

Science, technology and new knowledge can play crucial roles in supporting livelihoods for the vulnerable. Identifying the right kind of tech support is crucial to development progress, even more so in the context of agriculture. Augmenting water availability and efficiency, agriculture productivity, risk mitigation strategies and innovations on new models may be the ways to step up progress further.

Proposed Solution: Solar Powered Irrigation

One of the reason for Agriculuture being neglected sector is its low returns on investement. Input cost has increased over the years due to removal of farm subsidies succesively on different agriculutaral inputs such as fertilisers and fuel. 

One of the biggest reason of high input cost in agriculuture is contribution of irrigation nearly to 60% of input cost. 90% of agriculutural land in Imdia is heavily dependent on Monsson as well as well irrigation. If there is any delay in Monsson then well irrigation need to complement the irragation needs. Well irrigation in India is heavily depenedent on diesel fuel as well as electricity. 

If government invest one time investement on Solar powered irrigation instead of loan weaver then 60% of input cost will be waived off anf farmers need to invest lesser amount of sum in agriculture.

Storyboard:

Before Solar Powered Irrigation

After Solar Powered Irrigation

Stepwise Solotion :

• First of all we need to identify where irrigation can only be supported by Well irrigation.
• Then we need to identify vulnerable farmers
• Provide Solar irrigation support system directly to farmers

Target:

Vulnerable Farmers with less than 1 acre land.

Looks like prototype:

Layout of the workshop and assessment

Low Cost Experiment:

Hypothesis:

Solar Powered irrigation will largely reduce input cost in Agriculture.

Experiment details:

For one day experiment I will visit a village and will try to understand problems in agriculuture along with correalation of irrigation and agriculture input cost.

Steps :

1. Visit a village
2. Supervise solar irrigation setup
3. Amortise Solar panel cost for 10 years
4. Evaluate cost benefit analysis
5. Comare saving in input cost with increase in Income
6. Assess if farmer's income has increased or not

Cost of the experiment: Cost will be incurred only in travelling to and from the village.

Success Criteria: 

• Spread of fixed cost on solar panels system for 10 years should be lower than existing irrigation cost.
• Decrease in input cost must substentially increase farmer's Income.