By ORTON KIISHWEKO, 10th April 2010 @ 16:00, Total Comments: 1, Hits: 1012
THE celebration of World Water Day last week brought in several calls for action over one of the greatest challenges the country faces.
The Chair of the Board Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa Mr Kofi Annan led the chorus noting that governments confronted a reality of ensuring a growing population has access to clean and sufficient water so that it can feed itself and use it for agriculture as well.
The changes already underway, he said, are making vast areas of once productive land no longer fit for traditional agriculture.
“The result is that Africa is the only continent unable to feed itself. Agricultural productivity has failed to keep pace with a growing population,” he said, adding that despite millions of hectares of unused cultivated land, Africa spends $20bn dollars each year buying food.
And in his reference to Tanzania, he said the farmers in the southern highlands now plant early-maturing maize to escape the damage caused by an increasingly unreliable rainy season. He said farmers need help to manage water more efficiently, through water harvesting and small scale irrigation to rapidly increase productivity.
Perhaps the expectation is that, the National Irrigation Policy currently at final stage of the Ministerial Cabinet for approval will make a difference. According to the Assistant Director Irrigation, Research and technology promotion at the ministry of water and irrigation, Eng. Amandus Lwena, the irrigation policy mission is towards more crop production under irrigation.
Putting continental calls into context, local observers like Dr Lenny Kasonga of UDSM told ‘Daily News’ in an interview that rural farmers would have to enthusiastically put into practice techniques of irrigation to make the best of every drop of water as the government makes transforming agriculture a top priority.
“To maximize their farm areas, they will need efficient irrigation tools to get sufficient water to irrigate their farmlands,” he said.
However, he cited the lack of irrigation tools especially in rural Tanzania as an obstacle for farmers to shift from rain-fed agriculture to irrigation. Irrigation, he said, could make them have a shift to mechanized agriculture.
But Ole Nengilang’eti is a farmer, who has beaten the odds by buying an irrigation tool called Money Maker Plus irrigation pump and its hose pipe with 130,000/- of the 300,000/- loan he took from a Micro Credit Institution. He can today irrigate his crops as need be.
''My yields have scaled up,'' he says.
Her inspiring story generated interest in the Non Governmental Organization which had distributed such pumps to rural areas for farmers. While farmers like Nengilang’eti could be attracted by simple technologies, their major focus is on the results, which Mr Kofi Annan said was to make agriculture a more reliable source of living.
She nods in satisfaction as she watches her vegetables being watered, her farm is the pride of her area and considered a model farmer.
Appearing to have a role in lives of farmers such as Nengilang’eti, the Resident Director of KickStart International Tanzania , which promotes such simple technologies pumps, Mr Alfred Wise applauds the government’s efforts in running the ‘Agriculture first’ programme for one year but notes that the room to improve would largely roll around support rural farmers to buy such tools and improving road infrastructure through which they can transport their produce.
The NGO, which started in 2001, has since worked with the agricultural ministry, irrigation and the Prime Minister’s office, all in the name of training farmers on simple irrigation technologies, though a gap still prevails.
“Working with the government has been productive and this will ultimately have an effect on the farmers in terms of crop yields and their subsequent effect on their standards of living,” he says.
Their aim, he notes, is supporting farmers out of poverty, through working with experts from the government through municipal councils as they have done in the past. Their interactions with President Jakaya Kikwete on annual ‘Nane-Nane’, he noted, have been of inspiration.
“It made us notice that the government’s attitude towards this issue of agriculture is genuinely positive.” Mr Ken Weimar, the Senior Development Officer of KickStart, says mechanized equipment should reach millions to come out of poverty through irrigation agriculture that uses simple technology.
He emphasizes that irrigation gives predictable production, making the farmers benefit from his/her sweat in all seasons. The Director advises farmers to engage in irrigation agriculture but also not forget and food crops which are adaptive to hard conditions like cassava.
He said those who engaged in this sort of farming earlier have not been without successes, as they have received better output thus improving their lives. He applauds the government on the direction of Kilimo Kwanza.
He says the District Agriculture Funds would go far in having their way to have farmers to buy irrigation equipment as Money Maker pumps. On her part, Anne Otieno who is the KickStart sales manager, notes that there should be a mechanism for reaching all the rural farmers.
Poor infrastructure is however an obstacle in their endeavour to reach rural farmers while some other municipal councils have also not been that cooperative and some farmers failing to buy pumps due to poverty. With already over 200 agents, who distribute the pumps and over 35,000 households have benefitted after reaching 145,000 people having their standards of living improved, if they have their way.
At the national level, Eng. Amandus Lwena, says food production largely depends on rainfall, with little use of the huge potential of about 29.4 million ha for irrigation. This phenomenon, he says, has led the country to become highly vulnerable to the vagaries of weather.
The derivation from the National Irrigation Master Plan of 2002 have shown that the country has 29.4 million hectares suitable for irrigation with different levels of development potentials:- Viewing this huge potential for irrigation it is only 310, 745 hectares equivalent to 1 per cent of the total potential area, has been put under irrigation by June last year.
Irrespective of this small area, being put under irrigation, it has been demonstrated that the yield response to irrigation is almost 2 –3 times as compared to rainfed, this gives an indication that human societies will continue to rely on areas under irrigation for food security bearing in mind the possible high scope of crop intensification.
Some of the things he says the government has placed priority on as interventions in view of irrigation development are rehabilitation of existing traditional Irrigation schemes, construction of water harvesting schemes and promotion of low cost and affordable irrigation technologies.
According to Tanzania Development Vision 2025, Food self-sufficiency and food security are consistent with this vision under high quality livelihood. In order to achieve this, irrigated agriculture has to be improved to provide good ground for increased and stable production of crops.
“It is therefore imperative that research in irrigation be conducted to provide appropriate technologies on irrigated agriculture,” says Lwena.
Also, the Government formulated the National Poverty Reduction Strategy (NPES, 1998) with the overall goal: To reduce abject poverty by 50 per cent by the year 2010 and total eradication of abject poverty by 2025.
The participatory implementation of the strategy through District Agricultural Development Plans (DADPS). The ASDS proposed a target for the overall agricultural sector to grow by 5 per cent per year on an average over the 3-year period 2005/07.
As it is through irrigation that high, stable yields can be obtained, conducting research in irrigation is necessary to meet the proposed agricultural growth. The Government cannot afford to give every farmer irrigation equipment, however, the official says the government can offer them loans.
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Comment
I want to invest in a project of irrigation agriculture. It is said here per The National Irrigation Master Plan of 2002, 29.4 million hectares fits for irrigation agriculture and only 310,745(1%) is utilized for irrigation agriculture. Why shouldn't the government help to allocate this idle land to the local investors like me so that my irrigation agriculture project can be successiful?
Regards.
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