Jain Irrigation, an Indian maker of irrigation systems, uses dance and song to explain the benefits of drip irrigation to farmers who can't read.
Changing the fortunes of poor Indian farmers like Khodpe has been a lifelong mission for Bhavarlal Hiralal Jain, founder-chairman of Jain Irrigation Systems, the leading supplier of this technique in India.
"We've put in a lot of pivots in the last five years for people that never did have it before, " said Elton Sharp of Sharp Irrigation Systems in Georgia.
You can still see traces of their ancient irrigation systems at the ruined cities of Shivta and Mamshit in the Negev.
Jain Irrigation has become the world's second-biggest manufacturer of agricultural micro-irrigation systems, behind an Israeli outfit, Netafim.
An ancient system of water rights means that many farmers pay only modest amounts to obtain their annual allocations from the Rio Grande, and poor pipelines and irrigation systems allow lots of water to leak out.
According to the agency, only 27% of U.S. farmland has irrigation systems.
And some garden drip irrigation systems, which use lengths of perforated hose, are also exempted.
In the countryside the men have the backbreaking work of farming without mechanisation: again, fuel is dear, and many powered irrigation systems have broken down.
Corn producers who already had irrigation systems and were using more advanced techniques, notably in the north of the country, have increased their production.
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In each of these cases, an upstream country plans to build large dams to develop hydropower and irrigation systems, which will likely have significant negative impacts on the downstream neighbor.
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