The costs are considerably lower than for sprinkler or trickle systems, and comparable to those of lined canals. The book identifies circumstances where buried pipe systems will be more appropriate, identifies the different types of system, and presents recommendations on selection, design, construction, operation and maintenance of buried pipeline systems. In the case studies presented here, irrigation engineers describe water distribution practices as they actually occur in various schemes. The authors relate water flows to social processes and contrast conventional engineering wisdom with the practices they have observed. Geert Diemerand , social scientist, and Frans Huibers , irrigation engineer, are senior lecturers in the department of irrigation, soil, and water conservation of Wageningen Agricultural University, The Netherlands.
Irrigation plays a range of roles in mountain farming systems and their dynamics or change.
Hill Irrigation examines the environmental constraints and socio-economic contexts to successful mountain agriculture, and reviews the policies and technological approaches used to promote irrigation in different mountain regions. This survey is accompanied by a detailed bibliography of over 500 entries of literature on the subject. The treadle irrigation pump is able lift up to seven thousand litres of water per hour using the power of the human body, and can be made locally at low cost in small-scale metal working shops. Its acceptance in Bangladesh where it was first developed in 1984 is extra-ordinary, with over 500,000 pumps estimated now to be in use. The current design in this manual has evolved from the Bangladesh original into a fully portable pump with both lift and pressure capacity and is especially good for use in permeable soils where water cannot easily be distributed through channels.