What one acre of drip actually costs, itemised

Ask what drip costs per acre and you get a range. Forty thousand. Sixty. A lakh if someone is selling you a turnkey package. The range is useless, because it is not an answer to a question — it is a way of avoiding one.

Here is an actual bill of materials, at our own published prices, for one acre of cotton. Every number below comes from the same catalogue the shop sells from. You can check each line against the listing.

The total is **₹29,133**, inclusive of GST.

What an acre actually needs

An acre is 4,047 square metres. Call it a 64 by 63 metre block, which is close to what most fields look like once you walk them.

Round 3,339 up to seven 500-metre coils and you have 3,500 metres, with 161 to spare for the run to the field and the mistakes everyone makes on the first day.

Cotton at 1.2 metre rows means a lateral every 1.2 metres, running the 63 metre direction. That is 53 laterals, 63 metres each: **3,339 metres of drip line**. If you planted at 0.9 metres instead, the same acre needs about 4,470 metres — a third more pipe for the same field. Nothing else on this list changes as much for as little reason, which is why our cotton page says to measure your rows before ordering rather than trusting the number in your head.

The bill, line by line

Four fifths of that is the lateral. This is the thing the ranges hide: drip irrigation is one expensive item and a handful of cheap ones. Argue about the ₹495 tin of cement all afternoon and you will not move the total. The lateral is the decision.

A note on the ₹6 lines. Those fittings are boxed in hundreds, so the box costs ₹600 — but the box is packaging, not a minimum. You can order 53 takeoffs and pay ₹318. Reading a box rate as a unit price is the most common way an irrigation quote gets misread, and it turns a ₹6 part into a ₹600 one.

• Drip lateral, 16 mm inline, 0.4 mm wall — 7 coils of 500 m at ₹3,366 — **₹23,562**
• LDPE lapeta hose, 3 inch, 20 kg coil of 120 m — 1 at ₹2,880 — **₹2,880**
• Socketed non-return valve, CI 2 inch — 1 at ₹1,440 — **₹1,440**
• Poly takeoff, 16 mm — 53 at ₹6 — **₹318**
• Poly end cap, 16 mm — 53 at ₹6 — **₹318**
• Poly joiner, 16 mm — 20 at ₹6 — **₹120**
• Solvent cement, 250 ml tin — 1 at ₹495 — **₹495**
• Total — **₹29,133**

The one choice that moves the number

We stock the same 16 millimetre lateral, same 4 lph emitters, same 40 centimetre spacing, in two wall thicknesses. They are not close in price.

The 0.2 mm lateral comes on 1,000 metre coils at ₹3,960, which is ₹3.96 a metre. Four coils cover the acre for **₹15,840** and bring the whole system in at ₹21,411 instead of ₹29,133.

So why is the thicker pipe on the list? Because cotton sits in the ground for months. A lateral on a long-season crop is walked past, dragged over, chewed by rats and baked by sun for the whole of it. Thin wall is the right answer on a short vegetable crop that comes out in ninety days. On cotton it is a bet that you will not regret buying twice.

Buy the thin wall if you are irrigating vegetables, or if the cash this season genuinely decides whether the system happens at all. A working thin-wall system beats a perfect one you did not buy.

What this list does not include

This is where most published costings quietly stop being honest, so plainly:

Also excluded: the pump itself, the starter and cable, the valves and bends at the pump head beyond the single non-return valve above, a fertigation venturi, trenching, labour, and freight to your village. Depending on what you already have standing at the borewell, that is anywhere between nothing and another twenty thousand rupees.

**A filter is not on the list, and you need one.** We do not stock filters. Drip without filtration blocks — not if, when — and the emitters on these laterals are 4 lph, which is small enough that borewell silt will find them. Budget for a screen or sand filter separately, sized to your pump.

Two rates on one invoice

That is not a mistake on the bill. Micro-irrigation carries the lower rate; general plumbing goods do not, even when they are plumbing the micro-irrigation. On this acre it works out as ₹24,318 of goods at 5 per cent and ₹4,815 at 18. Every price in this article is MRP, which already includes the tax — the figure you see is the figure you pay.

One more thing that surprises people at the counter. The drip lateral, the takeoffs, the caps and the joiners are taxed at 5 per cent. The LDPE mainline, the CI valve and the solvent cement are taxed at 18 per cent.

What to do with this number

Treat ₹29,133 as a starting point with its assumptions written on it: one acre, cotton, 1.2 metre rows, 0.4 mm lateral, no filter, no pump. Change the crop or the row spacing and the biggest line changes with it.

The system estimator will do that arithmetic against your own field rather than this example one. If you are pricing several acres, or buying for a group, send the list through bulk enquiry and we will quote it properly — including the filter we have just told you we do not sell.