A homemade drip-irrigation system. Photo: Care of Creation (flickr)

Flood irrigation: that's how poor farmers in developing countries usually water their crops. It's wasteful and too water-intensive to work in the dry season, but until recently there haven't been other viable options — a traditional drip irrigation system could cost thousands of dollars.

But social entrepreneurs like Paul Polock and the California-based company, Driptech are working to change this by helping poor farmers set up low-cost drip irrigation systems. Driptech can sell their irrigation system for $30 in places like India, China and Ethiopia, because they use cheaper materials and have developed a new (top-secret) method for punching the holes in the irrigation tubes, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

As Business Week notes, the technology could be transformative:

Experts say low-cost irrigation could alter the economics of food. Subsistence farmers may be able to grow excess crops they can sell. Countries that rely on food imports could see their dependence on outsiders decline.

The innovation has allowed poor farmers to save "water, labor, and time — all while growing a valuable dry-season crop that greatly increased their annual income," boasts Driptech's website.

Driptech plans to relocate their manufacturing facilities to the countries where their products are sold. The company's blog notes that this "will help support the local economies while cutting out transportation costs and headaches."

Selling redesigned products to the poor can be a profitable business model, as some companies in India have also discovered. (I wrote about this phenomenon in "Selling to the Poor, On Terms They Can Afford"). In line with this trend, Driptech expects to make money while helping poor farmers start to turn a profit of their own.

Paul Polak leads a talk on affordable technology design for developing areas KrisKrug (flickr)

"Most of us look at the 1 billion men, women and children in the world who live on less than a dollar a day and see poor people," writes BusinessWeek. "But Paul Polak sees market failure."

Paul Polak is a 75-year-old former psychiatrist who founded a non-profit called International Development Enterprises. He calls himself a "Global Poverty Fighter."

For the past 25 years, Polak has worked with small farmers in developing countries to provide low-cost products that support self-sufficiency — drip irrigation products for small farmers with limited access to water, rice fertilizer to increase yields, and water-storage products that can be used in extreme temperatures.

An entrepreneur at heart, Polak believes in approaching the poor as customers — not charity recipients. He says 17 million people have climbed out of poverty thanks to his inventions.

Watch to learn more about Polak's entrepreneurial approach to fighting poverty.