Download Agricultural Technologies - Development - Lecture Notes and more Study notes Development Economics in PDF only on Docsity! The Q-Drum is a tire-shaped container fo s a Agricultural Technologies: Irrigation • Community Partner Presentations • Demonstration of Irrigation Technologies Community Partner Presentations: The students learned about D-Lab’s community partners and potential projects in Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil and Peru. Last week, they heard about Tanzania, Zambia, Ghana, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, China and India. These presentations inform the students’ selection of which regions they would like to work in during the January trip. Students will be matched into teams to prepare for their trips throughout the semester. The first meeting is scheduled to be during class next week, followed by weekly 2-hour meetings outside of class. Demonstration of Water Transport Technologies: Students split into teams to try out different technologies and help irrigate the lawns of MIT: Drip irrigation kits provide targeted irrigation to plants while using less water. Paul Polak of International Development Enterprises (IDE) saw that there were many large drip irrigation systems available for commercial farming, but no affordable small-scale drip irrigation kits for small plot farmers. IDE spent years developing these drip irrigation kits and now sells them for a price of a couple of dollars, which includes profit margins for the manufacturers, distributers and retailers. The main components of the kit are listed below, along with their functions: • Lined bag – holds water • Front valve – dispenses water • Lead – brings water from the bag to the main • Main – runs along one side of the plot • Submains (lateral lines) – bring water from the main to the rest of the plot area, punctured with straws at location of plants • Straws – distributes water to plants, can be tied into knots to control flow • Poking device – makes holes in the tubing for straws r transporting water that has a rope tied through it for pulling. It allow you to transport w ter by rolling it behind you instead of carrying it on your head, which is how most people carry water after collecting it from wells. Students said that it felt easier to use the drum than to carry water by bucket, but they also recognized that they are not used to carrying buckets and are not efficient at it. The Q-Drum can roll over the MIT lawn relatively easily and handle slight hills, but does not work well on rough ground or for river crossings. [Aside: Amy tried to adapt the Q-Drum design to transport clay in Ghana. At clay mines in Ghana, women can carry up to 150 pounds of clay on their heads to sell as coloring pigment in the market. It can be hard to pull the Q-Drum behind you over rough ground when it is filled with heavy material, so Amy designed a wheelbarrow version that you can push ahead of you instead.] Page 1 of 2 Docsity.com
