Rain water harvesting for large irrigation

A thought!

It has roots in my discussion with a friend of mine. His name is Bharat, a structural engineer now researching in agriculture. He has an idea of rainwater harvesting for poultry farming. He wants to use inexpensive ways to store water. I am thankful to him for sharing his ideas.

Ok now onto my idea.

I have..oops sorry, my father has a land of 15 acres in one plot. We have planted mango trees in this area. The trees depend on rainwater for their water needs. Annual rainfall fluctuates considerably, drought years being frequent. As a result the yield is average. I think my father is contented with the current yield.

But what I want to experiment is this. Convert the whole 15-acre farm into rain water harvesting region.

The system what I want to build goes like this-
1. A system that catches the rainwater before it reaches the ground levels.
2. Since it's a huge area, I cannot store the water in tanks or storage areas immediately after catching and at once. These have to be put through some kind of piping system and later channel them to a storage area.
3. Design a storage area that can store the rainwater.
4. Distribution of the stored water to irrigation. Normally, farmers use pump sets to distribute the well or bore well water to their farms. Though we can use the same system, we have to consider a farmer who doesn't have such a facility.

This stored water then can be used to irrigate the mango trees or use it to irrigate some other crops. We can either use drip irrigation or conventional methods to irrigate the land.

This whole system can be mapped to a river system analogy. Let's take an example of Cauvery river.

1. First, there are some specialized areas called as "catchment areas". These areas will catch the rainwater.
2. After the catchment area catches water, the water is channeled to dams through naturally formed canals (not sure if artificial canals are being used).
3. Dams are huge storage areas that can store the rainwater. Now, rainwater is successfully stored.
4. The stored water is distributed to farmers for their irrigation through artificial canals.

My idea is to develop a similar system to benefit a farming facility. But I am sure this is not going to be an easy task. Each step above throws up challenges. Apart from the immediate challenges the idea throws up, I am foreseeing a few higher-level challenges. These immediate challenges can be like designing a storage area that can store huge amounts of water without requiring considerable investments.

Higher-level challenges:
1. Cost is of the foremost importance. We need an inexpensive system.
2. Ease of implementation.
3. Reliability - The system will be deployed in rough weathers and will be exposed to all kinds of natural tests like wind, higher temperatures and severe sunlight.
4. Practical – I do not want this idea to end in a word document or a weblog. It should be able to reach the common men. Also, the idea is targeted at people who are mostly illiterate with little or no technical know-how.

As of now I am still stuck with the thought. I honestly do not know how to design the thought into a full-fledged idea and then into a practical solution.

If it proves successful, I can extend it to the remaining farmers around that area.

I am looking for ideas from interested people. If any of you have ideas on how to acheive this, do let me know. I'll be glad!

By the way, why do we have to spend time in rainwater harvesting if we can dig a borewell and extract ground water? Read the link below. It promts us to think about alternative ways to feed our hunger.
Eating Fossil Fuels

More on this later!