VegetablesA Teagasc report finds irrigation made the difference, at a cost of over €2,700 a hectare in water alone for some crops, while only 30-35% of the vegetable area has enough capacity.
AgrotechZoom-camera drones costing about $5,500 let farmers check fuel, flat tyres and broken drive shafts on irrigation pivots from the field edge, though some dealers say setup is still too slow.
106 solar-powered irrigation pumps now run in Maheshpur, Kotchandpur and Sadar upazilas of Jhenaidah, cutting farmers' irrigation bills and letting owners sell surplus water to neighbours.
With diesel up from Tk 115 to Tk 135 a litre, irrigation and haulage costs are rising in the Aman season and casting doubt over the coming Boro crop.
CropsSunRice has shed 80 mill jobs and MP David Farley wants 75 percent of available environmental water sold to irrigators before planting; the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder says its entitlements are cut by the same allocation rules in a dry year.
EnvironmentThe Bureau of Reclamation had feared 6 percent in August; the eight-reservoir system stood at 11 percent on 18 September against a median of 41.5 percent, and deliveries should end around mid-October as usual.
EnvironmentA PNAS paper estimates that replacing irrigated yields with rain-fed cropland would release 6.86 gigatonnes of carbon, more than the whole US emitted in 2024; pump electrification would cut the direct emissions further.
EnvironmentAn Economic and Political Weekly paper by Sandeep Kaur of the Central University of Punjab finds large farmers with deeper borewells earn higher returns while small and marginal farmers watch shallow wells run dry and buy water from neighbours.
A UKZN-Rhodes University study on a commercial farm near Pietermaritzburg measured a hemp crop using 377 mm of water over a four-month season, about 28 litres a day per plant area, with weeds between the rows taking a large share.
With imported gas up from $8-9 to $28 a unit and diesel prices squeezing farmers each irrigation season, the government will switch every deep and shallow tube well to solar, starting with about 36,000 pumps including the Barind project, State Minister Anindya Islam Amit said in Jashore.
Ray and Ryan Flickner's 1,000-acre Moundridge farm pairs subsurface drip irrigation laid in 2001 with strip-till, no-till, cover crops, drip lines retrofitted to pivots, an autonomous irrigator and plant sensors, and produced about 26 bushels per inch of water in the dry 2024 season, ten more than
A new report estimates that Himalayan water underpins about 20 percent of India's GDP and sustains its wheat, rice and tea economies.
A new IFPRI study projects that farmers across Sub-Saharan Africa will need solar pumping systems up to 30 per cent larger by 2050-70, narrowing solar's cost advantage over diesel, though falling panel prices should more than cover the difference.
