The irrigation army

Sometimes, the end of a service project leaves you feeling like what you did is a drop in the bucket. However, to the people you’ve helped, that drop can be the equivalent of an ocean.

Last year, as part of Smart Irrigation Month in July, Jain Irrigation and Richard Restuccia, vice president of landscape solutions, held a promotion. The company donated 10 percent of its profits for the month to Chapin Living Waters, an organization that helps poor people in developing countries grow vegetables when there is insufficient rain. In addition, the contractor who purchased the most tubing that month was invited to come on the company’s service trip.

The trip takes a group of people to a third-world country to help the people who live there install bucket kits to provide their gardens with sufficient irrigation.

In the end, Nick Martin from Kern Lawn Borders in Bakersfield, California, was the winner of the trip. He accompanied Restuccia, Restuccia’s wife Devonna Hall and Doug and Nancy Carlson, the executive director of Chapin Living Waters and his wife, to the Dominican Republic.

“The trip’s a pretty big commitment,” Restuccia says. “You’re winning a trip but you’re getting the opportunity to donate more.”

While staying at a local mission, the group went and worked on local farms – the equivalent of a large family garden in the U.S. Restuccia says the home gardens are used mostly to feed extended family and extra crops are sometimes sold. Water was available, but not within a good distance of the gardens, so a lot of hand watering was done.

With the installation of bucket kits – 5-gallon buckets and drip tape that ran down rows of about 30 feet to pots – Restuccia says sometimes the result can be up to a 40-percent higher crop yield.

“We supplied them and taught them how to install (the buckets), but they did the work and we were standing around a lot,” he says. “These people have been surviving by figuring it out and making it work.”

Restuccia says it’s a fun learning experience to work with the people, but the end of the trip can become overwhelming.

“When we get done with the trip and we’re talking about whether we did any good … we made a difference in a few people’s lives, but the problem is so big,” he says.

Restuccia says Jain will definitely be doing more trips, and while he hopes to bring along more people, he also understands that it’s not for everyone.

“There’s a certain group that gets it and wants to participate,” he says. “There’s a group that gets it and appreciates it, but doesn’t want to do the trip. The trip’s a pretty big commitment.”

However, he says until more people become involved, the work Jain is doing will continue to be just a “drop in the ocean.”

“It’s not going to stop here,” Restuccia says. “The only way I see us gathering any momentum is to enlist more people in this arm to work and provide water to everybody.”