Unilever Pakistan supports Drip irrigation

Micro Drip

Acumen Fund is a non-profit global venture capital fund which addresses global poverty by filling a niche between traditional capital markets and grant-based philanthropy and investing in innovative enterprises that use innovative market-based models to deliver Health, Housing, Water and Energy services to low income markets. One of Acumen Fund’s investments in Pakistan is Micro Drip (Pvt.) Ltd, a for-profit marketing and servicing company which has been setup by the Thardeep Rural Development Programme (TRDP) to provide low-cost drip irrigation systems to poor farmers in Thar and other arid regions of Sindh.

Micro Drip supplies drip irrigation systems, along with agricultural training and after-sales support, to enable farmers to extract a higher yield from their land at a much lower input cost. Unilever has been the core supporter of the Drip Irrigation projects, providing pilot funding to Thardeep Rural Development Programme for demonstration projects in Thar. The drip irrigation project in collaboration with Acumen Fund is aimed at facilitating the rural communities in a way that they can be empowered to secure their rights with command over resources and capabilities to manage the process of sustainable development. As part of its continued commitment to the project, Unilever further supports this initiative by providing the skills and expertise required (in the form of employee volunteerism / involvement) to help build and expand business.

The Unilever-Acumen Fund Volunteer Programme aims to provide Unilever employees with a challenging opportunity to use their skills and experience to help build sustainable social enterprises in Pakistan. It will also allow Unilever and Acumen Fund to identify and channel talent towards Acumen Fund investees which may benefit from access to professional resources.

A short story:

Mahavji Mal is a progressive farmer who decided to take a bold step and experiment with new technology. Mahavji bought a drip irrigation system for 0.5 acres and is reaping the benefits and the fruits of his success today. When asked about the main benefit of drip irrigation as opposed to the traditional flood irrigation, without a moment's hesitation, Mahavji exclaimed, "cost saving of diesel oil! Oil is really expensive, so we would not earn so much on flood. It takes 1 litre of diesel to irrigate ½ acre on drip and 5 litres of diesel to irrigate ½ acre on flood." His wife Moola added, "we save time and there is less labour work because weeding is less and we save water as well."