Lives of hundreds of farmers in Simdega district are being transformed with the help of Solar power based drip irrigation system. With the help of the Agriculture Technology Management Agency (ATMA), a government agency that provides technological help to farmers in the agricultural field, around five thousand acres of lands are being irrigated through the system, which boosts agricultural production many folds.
More than five thousand families are getting direct benefits from this scheme and it has also improved the living standard of the people of the remote area of the district.
Simdega is one of the most backward districts of the State and source of main livelihood of the people of the district is farming but due to poor irrigation system the farmers of the district have not been able to produce as much as required to even sustain so that most of the people migrate from other places.
Simdega District Project Director, ATMA, Krishna Bihari, informed that the department targeted 130 spots to provide irrigation facility through Solar Power based pumping system, which could irrigate around five thousand acres of land.
Almost 90 per cent of the total work has been completed at the end of the month January and it is expected that at the end of February the agency will be able to install all 130 Solar Power based pumping systems in the area, he added.
The project Director said that through the Solar Power System a 5 HP pumping set installed in the water bodies to bring water to the fields which cost very less than the diesel pumping sets.
It is the Central Government funded programme, through which the department is providing the system to farmers free of cost so that they can increase their income and grow more crops, he added.
“Earlier due to scarcity of proper irrigation system irrigation was very costly and most of the farmers of the districts are small and marginal so they could not afford costly irrigation systems like diesel pumping systems. Farmers of the district were mainly doing a mono crop farming system and grew only one crop in a year. Paddy has been the main crop, which farmers used to grow, but after the installation of the system they started growing other crops like vegetables other than paddy,” Bihari.
Simdega district is near to cities like Rourkela and Jamshedpur so selling the produce is not a problem, he said.