Exploring Solar Irrigation Pumps in Bangladesh

Finding the right partners and places to ask questions is paramount to understanding the drivers of agricultural transformation. To facilitate opportunities for researchers and partners to develop trust and scope early-stage evaluation questions, ATAI funds small Proposal Development grants. These support very preliminary, exploratory research activities, including researcher travel. With this Proposal Development grant, the researcher will explore the feasibility of a future randomized evaluation in Bangladesh to evaluate the impacts of solar irrigation pumps on agricultural decisions and outcomes, and in doing so, address crucial barriers to productivity in South Asian agriculture, including highly fragmented smallholder farms, negative externalities from groundwater extraction, and low take-up of modern technologies.