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The Real Story attended Clean Tech Open in San Jose last week, and talked to Danny Gilliland from Driptech, the manufacturer of low-cost drip irrigation systems for farmers in developing countries.

The idea behind the Driptech system, which runs creates water pressure from the gravity inside an oil drum, came to the company founder at Stanford, in a class called “Design for Extreme Affordability”. Looking for a way to provide a way for subsistence farmers in India and China to irrigate crops in the off-season, this simple system of precision-punched PVC tubing was designed at The Farm, and then field-tested in small plot farms in India for a year.

Can Driptech’s low-tech approach to water management be utilized for some of the Bay Area’s burgeoning organic farms? You bet. But you’ll have to take a number… there are a lot of farmers in India and China ahead in line.  For more details, see their website.