The Mangal Water Wheel Turbine Award-Winning Farmer meets the challenge of Irrigation

For poor farmers in the semi-arid tropics of South Asia, rain is not always dependable and thus agriculture has become a risky operation. Lifting water from distant water bodies, riverlets and streams to irrigate crops requires the installation of diesel pumps or electric pumps. The majority of farmers have no access to either diesel or electricity, which are both scarce and prohibitively costly.

An Environmentally Clean and Efficient Source of Energy

Mangal Singh, an IFAD Innovative Farmer Awardee from Uttar Pradesh in India, has harnessed the energy of the river flow to lift water for irrigation and is using the same source of energy for other rural community purposes. The fuel-less Mangal Water Wheel Turbine Pump, built from locally-available materials, runs entirely on sound mechanical principles and has no source of energy other than the flow of water.

The pump requires low waterheads of up to only 1 meter created by low-cost check dams and the turbine machine consists of a water wheel firmly mounted on a steel shaft fixed on foundation supports. The shaft is coupled with a gearbox with universal couplings to step up the speed of rotation. A centrifugal pump lifts the water from one end, while a pulley is used to derive power to operate the machine. The water wheel turbine’s design is simple and it can be made in different sizes to meet varying location-specific requirements anywhere in the developing world.

The many characteristics of the turbine include the following:

• It is environmentally friendly and cost-effective – no diesel or electricity required to operate the pump.
• The design of the machine is simple and it can be operated easiIy.
• It is highly energy-efficient – the amount of water lifted is much greater than with other alternative fuel-driven pumps (from available waterhead).
• It can be used for a multitude of tasks: agricultural works; operating a flour mill; sugarcane crushing; threshing; expelling oil, chaff cutting; and many others.
• Large areas of land can be irrigated. The energy-conversion efficiency is also considerably high and the operating costs are negligible.

IFAD 20th Anniversary Exhibits From China

Irrigation infrastructure in Shanxi Integrated Agricultural Development Project

Constructions erected with local labour from beneficiaries to order to improve irrigation and establish newly irrigated land

more than 110 000 households benefited (almost 450 000 people)

Total investment of USD 50 million with an IFAD loan of USD 25 million to develop approximately:

• 6 500 hectares of irrigated land
• 14 500 hectares of improved rainfed land
• 2 500 hectares of mulberry trees for silk production
• 4 400 hectares of fruit trees
• 13 300 hectares of new pasture to feed heard of sheep which were obtained from small credit.

In response to the domestic fuel crisis in rural Ouarzazate, the Appropriate Technology Training Centre (ATTC) has worked closely with local communities since 1994 to develop improved, fuel-efficient cookstoves. Because of the great variation in cooking and fuel-collection practices among communities, four different stove types have been developed to meet different needs: a two-pot ceramic stove, a two-pot ceramic stove with pot rests, a two-pot ceramic stove with chimney and a one-pot portable metallic stove.