The idea to build the first prototype of a Solar-Powered Irrigation System was actually a result of the many trips I made to the countryside which I called "Biyaheng Bukid."
As early as May of 2016, I started travelling all over the country even before I could assume the post of Secretary of Agriculture on June 30.
It was during my trip to Aparri, Cagayan Valley when I saw the great irony of so much water in the huge Cagayan River but rice fields just beside the massive body of flowing water were dry and unproductive during the summer months.
The reason was very simple: The river banks were so deep that to bring water to the vast rice fields, farmers have to use diesel powered centrifugal water pumps which is actually a very expensive operation.
It was in Aparri when I remembered what I saw earlier in Thermal City, Southern California where my friend, Filipino-American Rocky French, operated a Tiliapia fish farm in the middle of the Coachella Valley Desert.
Rocky French used huge solar panels to power three big water pumps which drew water from underground, up to a depth of about 1,200 feet and these supplied water to about 25 acres of fishponds.
In the last week of June, I made a quick trip to California to visit French in his farm in Thermal City and that was when I asked him to design for the country of his birth a small solar-powered system which could be established in a short time with low cost in the many upland and rain-fed rice fields of the Philippines.
Rocky introduced me to Moses Khuu, a young American solar-power engineer who helped him perfect his own system in Coachella Valley.
When the area to build the first solar-powered irrigation system was found in Barangay New Janiuay, M'lang, North Cotabato, Moses Khuu started working on the project initially with his brother-in-law, Gabriel Gonzales, and lately with Korean-American Kyu Whang.
Moses had to travel back to the US several times to procure the needed gadgets to build a No-Inverter Solar-Powered Irrigation System which would run the water pumps even when the sunlight was weak.
The absence of the Solar Inverters in the system that Rocky French and Moses Khuu designed is critical in the viability of the project because without the inverters, the cost of the project would be greatly reduced and there would be no need to buy the expensive batteries.
Frinally, yesterday, I switched on the first No-Inverter Solar-Powered Irrigation System in the presence of officials of Barangay New Janiuay led by Barangay Chairman Godofredo Constantinopla and the landowner, an old farmer named Antonio Jugos.
Pumping out water from a pond just beside the 5-hectare property of old man Jugos using a 10 horsepower water pump, the System is capable of submerging 3 to 4 hectares of rice fields in a day. It could provide water to a contiguous area of between 50 to 100 hectares using a pipe distribution system.
What is amazing with the system is the speed with which it could be assembled in the field.
Moses Khuu told me yesterday that if all the materials are available, he and his team could build the system in two weeks.
Aside from that the cost of providing water is estimated at P120,000 per hectare if the area is only 50 hectares and P60,000 if the coverage is 100 hectares.
President Rody Duterte will be invited to formally switch on the first No-Inverter Solar-Powered Irrigation System early next year and that would signal the start of the Solar-Powered Irrigation Revolution in the country.
With this innovation, water will now be available to farmers in the upland and rain-fed rice fields.
All that would be needed would be a source of water like a small water impounding, a lake or even deep wells and, of course, plenty of sunlight.
By Manny Piñol
