By Manny Piñol
I read an interesting column today written by a journalist-friend, who I believe was fed with politically-laced information coming from my home province.
He exposed that two Solar-Powered irrigation Systems in North Cotabato, part of 169 units being built all over the country, are not working now because the creeks where water is drawn had dried up.
My answer? True! Confirmed!
Does that make the Solar-Powered Irrigation System concept wrong and those units useless?
No?
The concept of tapping the heat of the sun to generate power to run water pumps to irrigate the fields is not new.
It is employed by Israel, India, Southern California and many other advanced agricultural areas in the world.
In the Philippines, Solar-Powered Irrigation System was embraced by the Department of Agriculture (DA) only after it was endorsed by President Rody Duterte in March 2017.
Today, an Israel Agro-Industrial Corporation has offered to fund and establish a state of the art Solar-Powered Irrigation System network which would be linked by a computer which would monitor whether the units are working efficiently or not.
The Israeli experts who belong to the giant LR Group has projected that rice production would double using their technology which would include “Fertigation” or the precise application of fertiliser through irrigation water.
But back to the two Solar-Powered irrigation Units in M’lang and Matalam, North Cotabato which was reported to be non-operational because the water sources have dried up.
These were two of the first units to be built and it is expected that there would be challenges to be encountered.
it was the farmers who identified the water sources and our engineers built the SPIS where they recommended it to be built.
Yes, the creeks have dried up but that does that mean that everything is lost?
No! In fact, this week our engineers will conduct water drilling operations to establish an alternate source of water from the underground.
Water could be drawn from the deep well to fill up the reservoir and make the Solar-Powered Irrigation Systems work again.
So now, the farmers will have two sources of water – the creek, when there is enough water to be drawn, and the deep well when drought or El Niño would dry up the creeks.
This is what we call the learning curve. We learn from our mistakes and improve.
It is a pity that there are people, who rejoice on seeing new ideas fail or falter.
I remember when I was a young boy trying to learn how to ride a bike.
Some of my friends laughed when I fell but I kept on until I was good enough to ride a motorcycle.
This is the ugly side of human nature – envy which consumes people who pray that others would fail rather than help so that everybody will succeed.
I am relieved though that there are not so many of that kind of people in the country but I am sad that most of them are living in my home province occupying political positions.
(First photo shows a solar irrigation system in Isabela which is working. The succeeding photos show the reservoir and the pipes of the Manubuan Solar-Powered irrigation System. Next week, drilling operations will be done to establish a new water source as the El Niño dried up the creek.)
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