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Father Of Drip Irrigation
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By Laura Drotleff Senior Staff Writer
(This is follow-up information to the "Father Of Drip Irrigation" article in American Fruit Grower's May 2006 issue)
Bucket Kits
Richard Chapin, 88, started as an ordinary grower who felt he was spending too much time and energy watering his plants. A grower of potted flowering plants in Watertown, NY, Chapin saw the opportunity to save water, labor, time and fertilizer by watering each plant with individual tubes.
He began selling the drip tubes out of his greenhouse operation in 1960 and within two years, the drip technology was widely embraced in the United States. In 1962, Chapin Watermatics was incorporated and today, drip irrigation is one of the most widely used irrigation methods in the world for greenhouse and field applications on a variety of crops.
Chapin’s success with drip irrigation for commercial growers caught the attention of Catholic Relief Services, an organization that provides emergency relief and long term development activities around the world. The organization asked Chapin to travel to Senegal in 1974 to set up a field for growing vegetables in drought conditions. Upon his return from Senegal, he began to adapt his commercial drip technology to work in simpler and smaller applications. In the late ‘70s, Chapin Watermatics introduced the Bucket Kit, an inexpensive drip irrigation device that uses only 10 gallons of water daily and allows a single person to produce enough crops to feed an entire family. The Bucket Kit adequately waters two 50-foot rows of vegetables, Chapin says, and can be used for up to 10 years.
A five-gallon bucket, mounted one meter above the soil, provides sufficient pressure and allows the gardener to maximize efficiency of the water she collects, with less effort and better yields than hand-watering. Recipients of the kits also receive information on basic soil preparation, fertilizing, seed germination and plant care.
Of the Bucket Kit’s many success stories, one of the most recent and significant is in Malawi, a famine-stricken country in southern Africa, where the foundation has shipped 10,000 Bucket Kits. In November 2004, the Madalitso Food Processing Plant opened with the goal to feed 25,000 orphans per day with help from the kits. Today, the plant feeds upwards of 60,000 orphans daily.
For more information, visit www.chapinlivingwaters.org or e-mail rchapinw@imcnet.net.
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