President Rody Duterte has ushered in a new age for Philippine Agriculture by leading the switch on of what could be the first small scale irrigation project using Solar Power.
The President flew to the remote village of New Janiuay in M’lang, North Cotabato at about 2 p.m. to officially commission a Solar-Powered Irrigation System (SPIS) designed by Asian-American technicians which would provide water to about 70-hectares of rice farms which used to depend on rain water.
“This is what is called innovation,” the President said after witnessing how a 10-horsepower pump powered by 50 solar panels pumped out about 400 gallons of water every minute even under overcast skies.
The President said he was impressed by the system which started pumping water at least one minute after the President switched it on witnessed by farmers Antonio Jugos and Alfonso Palmares who own the piece of land where the water pump and the solar panels were established.
Filipino-American Rocky French, who has been using the Solar-Powered Irrigation technology to operate a 25-acre Tilapia fish farm in the desert of Coachella Valley in Southern California, told the President that the pump was only operating at half of its capacity because the sunlight was not intense at about 3:30 p.m. and the sky was partly covered by dark clouds.
With intense sunlight, the system could pump out between 800 to 1,000 gallons every minute and it could irrigate 15 hectares every day or 150 hectares in 10 days, according to a technical study made by the Department of Agriculture’s Central Agriculture and Fisheries Engineering Division (CAFED).
The system could be established in less than a month with an estimated development cost of P60,000 per hectare which is about P300,000 lower than the cost of providing irrigation to every hectare of rice farm under the big irrigation systems of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) which ranges from P350,000 to P450,000.
The New Janiuay SPIS, which officially becomes the first small-scale irrigation system using solar power commissioned by the Department of Agriculture, will mark the start of a nation-wide program to provide water to small rain-fed rice farming areas where farmers could only plant once a year during the rainy season.
Targeted to cover 500,000 hectares over the next five years, the SPIS is expected to contribute largely to the DA’s program to attain rice sufficiency during the term of President Duterte.
(Photos by Roldan Gorgonio, John Pagaduan, Ardy Tompong and Jacalan, Dept. of Agriculture)
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