Overview

In the year 20023, Nodes Digital Limited implemented our flagship solution e-irrigation in partnership with iFarmer in two districts in the North of Bangladesh in Natore and Bogura. 

In Bangladesh the most valuable crop is cereal which accounts for 77% of the total land area under cultivation.   Among the cereal, Boro rice alone accounts for over 40% of the total production. Rice cultivation requires a large amount of Water; 3,000-5,000 liter of water input is required in the rice field to produce 1 kg of rice depending on different rice cultivation methods. Irrigated rice makes the highest demand for water in the agriculture sector.  The water use for irrigation (groundwater, surface water, or rainwater) is highly inefficient in Bangladesh. Due to the faulty and old-fashioned irrigation systems, only about 25% to 30% of the water is used for irrigation.  Most farmers use groundwater from the surface level water and use shallow tube wells with an electric/diesel-operated pump (90% diesel and 10% electric operated). 980 million kwh of electricity is used by electric tube wells with an estimated subsidized cost of USD 50 million. The annual diesel consumption for groundwater extraction is of 4.6 billion liters, costing USD 4.0 billion in aggregate.  

Technology

Our vision is to make agriculture sustainable and intelligent through data driven field level decision making and operations which can impact economic and social wellbeing of farmers. At present agriculture activities in Bangladesh are conducted based on generalized best practices and for that irrigation is a major contributing factor that affects sustainability. To mitigate these problems and make agriculture sector sustainable, we developed and implemented 4IR technology based Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) irrigation system which we brand as “e-Irrigation” The system comes with multiple IoT devices that collect sensor data from the field which is then analyzed by the system utilizing machine learning models. The solution can also be deployed integrated with solar based energy system contributing further to SMART Bangladesh and SDG goals.

Results and Impact

Use of our IoT and AI based technology solutions optimizes resources and saves irrigations cost by 25-30% and subsequent energy savings; and increases yield by 7 to 11% through optimized agriculture actions based on real-time field information.

Significant reduction of water use in irrigation through the integrated Hardware and Software system developed will also optimize various input use associated with irrigation and hence reduce greenhouse gas emission. In addition, e-irrigation helps to achieve various Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) relevant to agriculture such as climate action (GOAL 13), sustainable food (Goal 2) and Water security (Goal 6).