Scientists are using NASA satellite data to text Bangladeshi farmers water-saving strategies

Tapping into NASA satellite data, a new technology is helping farmers in Bangladesh reduce water waste while irrigating rice crops — an effort that could ultimately mitigate the water and energy footprint of the country's large-scale rice production.

The latest version of the Integrated Rice Advisory System (IRAS), a collaboration between the University of Washington and Bangladesh's Ministry of Agriculture, uses data from NASA's Earth-observing Landsat satellite to estimate the amount of water rice crops have consumed. Researchers can compare that data to how much water the crops really need, based on weekly weather forecasts and by taking into account recently performed local irrigations.

Simple, actionable guidance is then sent as SMS to farmers once every two weeks about optimal ways to use groundwater pumping for their specific region.

Such a technology "can help the world become more water-efficient and energy-efficient in growing food, while also becoming more affordable and convenient for farmers," Faisal Hossain, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle who leads the IRAS effort, said in a statement.

Bangladesh is currently the world's third largest producer of rice, and farming is the main occupation for nearly half the country's workforce to feed its population of 170 million. Rice, however, is also one of the thirstiest crops — farmers across the country currently use 1.3 million irrigation pumps run by diesel to water them. But, only about 1,400 of those pumps are solar-powered.

Over the years, intensive and unsustainable irrigation practices, like pumping more water into the field than strictly necessary, have decreased the country's groundwater levels so much that monsoon rains are now  insufficient  to replenish the extracted underground water. Moreover, operating diesel pumps to channel water into fields is not only expensive but also burns fuels that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. 

Thus, technologies like IRAS would be useful to conserve groundwater while helping the country reduce its carbon dioxide emissions, researchers say. "To create sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture for the future, we need to minimize irrigation waste and de-carbonize the production by using affordable solutions that can be scaled globally," Hossain said in the statement. 

His team, which has advised 10 million farmers across Bangladesh as of June this year, estimates IRAS has the potential to decrease water waste in agriculture by 30% and reduce carbon emissions by 300,000 tons every year.

Although previous versions of the system have been in use in Pakistan since 2016 — where the technology was first deployed — and in India since 2018, researchers say the latest iteration has been tailored to target Bangladeshi areas known for wasteful irrigation processes. 

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Taxonomy

• Telecommunications
• Telecommunications
• Satellite