VENKATNARAYANA
Bukkapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India | 4/26/2017 – Present
Mango and sweet lime trees that would have otherwise dried up last summer has new leaves even in the peak of summer. Taste of fruit using microbe inoculates are more sweet and tasty. Women grow their household needs of organic vegetables in their backyard. Every species survive and thrived in our customer bio-diversity park and having over forty species. That SWAR can further reduce plant water need and applied and based on the water as available with the farmer in summer, helped saves high value productive trees that would have dried and died. This idea of “dual purpose irrigation” was a recommendation from our women co-creators as they wanted every plant to survive, just as they give less food to everyone in periods of shortage.
Preparation
At great expense, his neighbor could afford to supplement his bore well water with purchase of tanker water every week, hoping to save mature mango trees. Venkatnarayana got SWAR installation in summer as he was sharing water from a common bore well and the availability was very low.
The Department of Rural Development of AP asked us to pilot install SWAR on select farms in Anantapur as thousands of fruit-bearing trees were dying. They offered to pay.
We explained SWAR principle of measured moisture at plant root zone, showed films and got them to speak to farmers using SWAR. They got the idea and immediately built platform and bought an overhead tank and dug pits as advised by us. We installed SWAR with irrigation schedule advisory. Initially, they were worried but using moisture probes they saw moisture level at root zone with varying water releases. They were happy and confident and joyful to see new plant leaves in peak summer. They got better results using less water and others wanted SWAR.