Kickstart: The irrigation tool farming economies desperately need

Water is the liquid of life. We cannot live without it. It is a life giver and a life saver, and yet we increasingly hear talk of a water crunch. Increased global populations and demand from agriculture already mean that some people around the world are now facing water shortages and many people feel that, in the future, we will all be living in a much thirstier world.

Although the problem is now most keenly felt in the poorest parts of the world, I’ve headed off to one of the richest – to visit the rather trendy headquarters of a company which is trying to help those in most need.
Martin Fisher is the CEO of Kickstart. He spent decades in Africa working on community projects –many involved improving access to fresh water. 

Standing in his New York office, what I am looking at is rather like a heavy metal version of the sort of Stairmaster workout machine you’d find in a gym.  It is a bit of simple tech using a tried and tested reciprocating pump valve that relies on suction and pressure, powered by humans. Its purpose is to help farmers irrigate their land. One person does the workout on the foot operated pump, the other takes the hose. The more you walk, the more water you pump.

It looks simple and indeed I was surprised this isn’t part of the basic agricultural tools farmers already use.  But even today in many poorer parts of the world, traditional agriculture still relies on regular rain during the one or two rainy seasons. If it doesn’t rain, the food doesn’t grow.

When you can only grow food when it rains, there’s an economic problem as well as an agricultural one. When all of the farmers pick their crops at once, the market becomes flooded with produce during certain months and, as a result, at the very time farmers have something to sell the oversupply of produce forces prices down. It’s a painful Catch 22. When prices are high farmers have nothing to sell, and when they are low farmers have too much produce. Seasonal farming can leave communities stuck in a cycle of poverty and hunger.

KickStart introduced human powered pumps for irrigation in 1997 to address this problem. The pumps are sold for between US $35 and US $100. KickStart estimates that farmers using irrigation during dry seasons increase their annual incomes by over US $1000. It’s why they’ve called their foot pump The Money Maker.

As I hear the trucks of New York delivering produce to warehouses, as  planes fly overhead, and as we sip on coffees which no doubt would cost more than the average weekly wage of many of those we are talking to – it’s sobering to think about the impact of the simple bit of kit in front of us. But KickStart estimates that its irrigation pumps have brought over US $100 million to rural communities throughout the developing world. They believe this is helping solve not just a water issue, but it’s alleviating hunger and helping economies at the same time. 

The author of this article, Adam Shaw, is one of the hosts of the BBC World News show ‘Horizons’. You can catch the show every Saturday at 2pm IST, and a repeat on Sundays at 8pm IST.