Farmers in hot, arid regions are turning to low-cost solar pumps to irrigate their fields, eliminating the need for expensive fossil fuels and boosting crop production. But by allowing them to pump throughout the day, the new technology is drying up aquifers around the globe.
There is a solar-powered revolution going on in the fields of India. By 2026, more than 3 million farmers will be raising irrigation water from beneath their fields using solar-powered pumps. With effectively free water available in almost unlimited quantities to grow their crops, their lives could be transformed. Until the water runs out. The desert state of Rajasthan is the Indian pioneer and has more solar pumps than any other.
But that may soon change, as costs come down. “The potential in Africa is large,” says Claudia Ringler, a water specialist at the Washington, DC-based International Food Policy Research Institute. “Solar power is a breakthrough technology. Barriers will be increasingly overcome, and it will transform agricultural irrigation.” Falchetta reckons horticultural crops will benefit most from the extra water made available by solar pumps, “due to their high water requirement and high economic value.
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