visakhapatnam in a novel initiative a gravitybased irrigation system has been set up in the tribal parts of dumbriguda mandal in visakhapatnam district the pilot project now at the testing stage has water being drawn through pipes from an elevated perennial stream to irrigate farms in the areaa 31acre cluster belonging to 51 tribal families at logili village are expected to benefit from this project until now the area was solely dependent on rain for irrigation but with this system in place tribal farmers have access to water round the yearthe technology which has existed for a while was earlier used only for the purpose of obtaining drinking water but the adoption of this irrigation method is slated to earn farms between rs 80000 and rs 1 lakh a year per acre a very significant jump from rs 800012000 per acre earlier as per plan the area will be promoted as an organic vegetable clusterthe project costs around rs 18 lakh it is primarily financed by bred for the world a german organisation apart from local organisations such as vikasa birds lotus wireless company ltd and community membersexplaining the irrigation method kiran sakkhari executive director of vikasa said gravitybased drinking water facility already existed to meet the drinking water requirements of the village this project was recently taken up to partially channel the stream flowing alongside the village by constructing a check dam across the flow on a sheet rock to a 31acre clustercurrently farmers here grow only one crop millets or groundnut as rainfed crops if all these fields are networked through pipelines water coming from the check dam could be useful in growing at least two crops thereby making the best use of the land by crop rotation sakkhari added