France is world's second largest agricultural exporter and follow highly advanced agricultural techniques. During his recent visit to Cannes, the actor befriended a few Frenchmen who happened to own farms in Nice and invited the actor for a tour. Nawaz learnt a new technique of irrigation during the tour.
He says, `Almost every kind of crop in France was being irrigated using this cost-effective and water efficient technique called center pivot irrigation". Nawaz instantly thought of applying this technique in his Village, and got a sample model fabricated and shipped to his village.
His native place Budhana falls under the dark zone where the water level is way below the alarming level and farming is becoming a challenging task with every passing day, thus water conservation is of utmost importance in this region.
In the traditional irrigation technique, water is sprinkled in the farms in random directions which may or may not meet the need of the crop, it also ends up wasting a lot of water which is not a feasible idea in dark zone regions. With central pivot irrigation, minimum water is used and crops are watered from top to bottom, which is the most ideal way of watering a crop (natural way like rains).
`The UP Government commissioned a research which marked Budhana in the `dark zone' given its sinking water levels. When I worked in the fields, we would manage to find water 80 feet below the ground and until four years ago, bore wells could pump water out of 110-120 feet, today, in Budhana, water is found 220 feet under the ground. It was challenging to explain the farmers the benefit of this technique. The best way to explain this technology to them was to ask them which is the best way to irrigate land. Everyone agreed that natural rainfall was the best option and this technique recreates the sprinkle of rainfall."
Nawaz, has grown sugarcane, rice and wheat in his farms and returns to inspect the progress of his harvest, whenever he gets time.
