What do mobile phones have to do with irrigation?

One obstacle that prevents farmers from implementing irrigation schemes in the most efficient way on their farm is their lack of knowledge. Training every farmer on how best to manage water seems unrealistic due to the costs and time required. However, I came across an article that talks about making use of what most African farmers already have (mobile phones) and using texting as a means of communicating valuable information. The article talks about a pilot project, which was carried out in Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, where information and weather advice was provided to small-scale farmers over SMS.  

Farmers using phones on a farm in Uganda (Source)

The whole trial was generally positive, and it sounds like this could be a method that may well be used in the future to help farmers with the management of irrigation. I did some further research on this and came across this paper, written by A. Singels and M.T. Smith describing a pilot SMS model, like the one in the article, being used as a trial in South Africa.  Unlike my previous posts, this post will look at the situation of farms post-irrigation.  The paper states that the irrigation techniques used in South African sugar cane farms have not been so positive due to over-irrigation, and that irrigation schemes have had very low water efficiencies and reduced profitabilities. This is due to:

·      The difficulties in using technology and applying information gathered using technology in practice on the farm.

·      Farmers having the perception that accurate irrigation scheduling has little benefit to crop yield, especially small-scale farmers who do not have access to monitoring equipment or the internet to help them schedule their irrigation.

So although irrigation has been implemented in this instance, it is not being used in the best way. There needs to be a means of allowing farmers to access and understand crop growth models and weather predictions so that they can use their irrigation instruments in the most optimal way.

Irrigation can be scheduled to meet certain targets, such as to maximise profits or to maximise water use efficiency and minimise water wastage. Models have been developed to calculate irrigation schedules, which provide watering dates and subsequent watering quantities to meet these targets, but farmers have often found these models too complex and difficult to understand. So models need to be simplified with straightforward advice so that farmers can receive user specific guidance that can be applied easily. The paper describes a centralised irrigation model (My Canesim as shown in Figure 1) that provides real time advice, such as the advice shown in Table 1. The system was evaluated using the following criteria:

·      A comparison of the long-term performance of the irrigation advice given by the system to current irrigation practices.

·      The implementation of the system on several fields, with a focus on crop growth, water use and farmer acceptance.

Figure 1: My Canesim network

Table 1: The five different options of irrigation advice 

The paper found that measurements taken by farmers on rainfall and irrigation were generally unreliable. Some farmers also initially ignored advice from the SMS systems and needed reassurance that the advice would be beneficial, as some of the advice was quite contradictory to their usual practices. 

The paper states that the pilot project did improve yields and provide helpful advice, but farmers would need regular communication to convince them to take on board the advice. This is understandable, as farmers may find it hard to suddenly trust an external source of information that is being generated by a person who has not even seen their farm. However, I believe this has the potential to be a good method that can be implemented quite easily, given that many farmers nowadays have mobile phones. This is not to say I do not have any concerns with the model.

Here are some problems I thought of when reading about this type of SMS-based communication system for irrigation:

1)   Costs to run the system- there would need to be data analysers, crop experts and hardware and software engineers to ensure that the whole system runs smoothly. There is no mention of farmers paying to use this system, however, I imagine a lot of funding would be needed from governments or NGOs if this system were to be used on a large-scale.

2)   Accountability – advice may be inaccurate in some cases and there is a risk of farmers suffering devastating losses if the advice is misinterpreted or unreliable. Who is to blame in this case?

Despite the potential problems, an SMS-based model could be a step forward in making the most of irrigation schemes. Not only would it help farmers increase their crop yields, but also ensure that water is being used in the best possible way with as little wastage as possible, which is really important in areas that are water scarce or have little access to water.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s small-scale farming future

My two previous blog posts talk about the potential for small-scale irrigation to increase yields, benefit farmers, and consequently improve social and economic development. But I wanted to take a step back and look at smallholder farming practices in general in Sub-Saharan Africa, regardless of irrigation. The future of small-scale farming is worth looking at, as there would be no point in developing small-scale irrigation technologies and encouraging the implementation of them if smallholder farming does not have a secure place in the Africa’s farming future.

It is also important to consider the challenges of smallholder farming, and whether the benefits of small-scale irrigation make smallholder farming worthwhile despite the challenges. I have decided to look at an article written by T.S.  Jayne, David Mather, and Elliot Mghenyi, titled ‘Principle Challenges Confronting Smallholder Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa’, and I will focus on the issues that may hinder the implementation of small-scale irrigation technologies.

The aim of the study was to highlight the growing challenges of smallholder agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa and to review the policy and public investment options to address these issues, which the researchers believe to be key influences impacting smallholder farming in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using survey data from Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Zambia, Jayne et al. identify empirical similarities in terms of problems. The five countries that were studied were chosen according to the availability of data sets, with the majority of data being collected by national statistical services. Although this was probably the most feasible method of finding and collecting the appropriate data, national statistical services can vary between each country, and the reliability of the surveys conducted can be debatable. Some surveys were devised by ministries and government bodies, such as in the Mozambique, whilst the surveys carried out in Kenya were created entirely by universities. It is important to be wary of who created and published the survey data, as government-published statistics could potentially be biased in order to create a more positive representation of the actual reality. Nonetheless, there is a thorough description of each type of survey used in each country and how the samples were selected.

The paper describes how there has been a steady decline in land-to-person ratios, meaning that the area of arable land that each person controls is getting smaller and smaller. For example, more than 25% of the small-scale farms that were surveyed were controlling less than 0.11 ha of farmland per capita, meaning they are getting close to landlessness. Farmers tend to settle where there are advantageous agro-ecological conditions and where there is easy access to markets, resulting in highly dense farming settlements with competition for resources. There remains lots of free land in rural areas, but the undesirable remote locations mean that no one wants to move there.

The farms were also ranked by per capita land size and divided into four equal quartiles to reveal some surprising results – for example, a doubling of income from crops in households that were in the bottom quartile (such as by switching to new technology or increasing inputs such as fertilisers) would have a minimal impact on their absolute level of income. This is a point worth elaborating on – if per capita farm areas are getting smaller and smaller, are implementing irrigation schemes really going to be cost effective? It may be cost-effective for the government to invest in an improved water source such as a water tap or well if there are many farmers concentrated nearby.  But for the farmers operating on the smallest scales, irrigation may not be an affordable option. Furthermore, if farmers are operating so close together, then using small-scale irrigation schemes like motor pumps would not be so effective as water collection waiting times would increase, and supplies may be used unsustainably. This is a catch 22 as many governments in Sub-Saharan Africa do not have the money to develop water sources in rural areas where population densities are low, however, rural water investment is probably needed the most so that farmers can disperse, have more land, and become more productive. The paper states that government spending in Africa has not tended to support the most rural farmers, which has been one of the reasons that Africa’s crop productivity has remained stagnant since 1961 whilst there have been improvements in productivity in the rest of the world. The paper concludes that most small farms in Africa are becoming more impractical and are becoming ‘increasingly unviable as sustainable economic and social units’ (Jayne et al.: 1394). The paper does not only give land distribution as the only reason for this, it also talks about crop market performance, crop prices, barriers to non-farm employment and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  The paper suggests that the barriers that prevent the implementation of ‘productivity-enhancing inputs’ need to be removed by changing policies, increasing public spending on agriculture, and putting more research into the agricultural sciences of small farms rather than large-scale farming.

In my opinion, the paper was quite unoptimistic about the future of small-scale farming. Although the purpose of the paper was to examine the challenges of smallholder agriculture, I thought it was quite narrow-minded in the way it implied that the only influential actor that could address these challenges was the government and large international organisations such as the World Bank. It had limited scope on bottom-up approaches and ignored a crucial actor in development, which are non-governmental organisations (NGOs). NGOs have had a big role to play in all sectors of Africa’s development, and I believe that they have potential to influence the future of smallholder agriculture by investing in new technologies and training farmers.  One example of an NGO helping small-scale farmers in East Africa is ‘Farm Africa’.

A screenshot of the NGO Farm Africa’s webpage.

The NGO has carried out many projects that have empowered small-scale farmers. For example, Farm Africa have trained farmers in Ethiopia to use ‘climate-smart’ farming methods including irrigation. This could be an alternative to the dominant top-down approaches that were discussed in the paper.

Small-scale irrigation potential in Sub-Saharan Africa

In my previous blog post, I encouraged the expansion of small-scale irrigation schemes as I felt this was a sustainable alternative for Africa’s irrigation future rather than large-scale schemes. Whilst searching for the different types of schemes available, I came across this video, produced by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations,  promoting the use of motor pumps, which led me to explore this technology further.

The video claims that investments in motor pumps in Sub-Saharan Africa could benefit 187 million people. So what are motor pumps and are they a promising solution to the water crisis relating to agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa?

A still from the above video shows how motorised pumps would enable the transport of water instead of farmers having to carry buckets of water from the access point to the pump multiple times. 

Motor pumps are small pumps that are powered by diesel or electric engines. They are an alternative means for transporting water from an access point to a farm and allow the movement of increased volumes of water compared to traditional water-lifting methods. This means that irrigation can become more efficient, in terms of the time taken to irrigate a piece of land and also the area that can be irrigated (AG Water Solutions 2012).

The FAO claims that by 2025 there will be 1.2 thousand million people living in Sub-Saharan Africa who will require over 300 million tons of grain and that traditional irrigation methods will not be enough to meet the demand. But is there actually as much potential for motor pumps to be used in Sub-Saharan Africa as the video claims?

Let’s first take a look at the groundwater distribution in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Figure 1: Groundwater distribution in Africa (Source)

Sub-Saharan Africa actually has areas with high abundance of groundwater. For example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has over 50,000 mm of groundwater storage. This is not to say that the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa is rich in groundwater sources, but there is certainly potential for groundwater to be used for irrigation. Figure 1 also shows that the DRC has relatively high recharge rates. But according to the NGO The Water Project, the government of the Congo does not have the funds to develop and maintain water pumping systems to obtain groundwater. Only about 69% of the population in Congo’s urban areas are able to access water from the state water utility but what about the rural areas, where most farmers operate? Again, according to The Water Project, many people in the rural areas get their water from streams and ponds. So here we see that groundwater abstraction has not taken place due to a lack of funds and investment for piped water supplies, especially in rural areas, making motor pumps an impossible method of small-scale irrigation if there are no piped access points in the first place. So a lack of access points due to insufficient funds is a major reason why small-scale irrigation schemes have not reached their potential.

Let’s now look at a country where there are relatively more piped water access points. According to the World Health Organisation, Burkina Faso is one country in the Sub-Saharan region that has had one of the highest rates of growth of access to improved water supplies between 1990 and 2008, with 76% of the population having access to an improved water supply. In this country, agriculture and stock farming contribute to 33% of the country’s GDP (Pavelic et al. 2012). Groundwater abstraction in the country has mainly been done through boreholes and wells, and the number of boreholes in Burkina Faso increased by 50% in just 8 years. Although data on groundwater specifically is limited, Pavelic et al. (2012) claim that in 2009, only 6.4% of  total renewable water was used for irrigation and livestock watering. AG Water solutions say that potential irrigable land still remains high at 233,500 ha. Stakeholders were asked why small-scale irrigation like the use of motor pumps still remains very low (AG Water solutions) and the findings are as follows:

·      The local market for small-scale irrigation technologies has been very small with limited choice, making it difficult for farmers to choose a technology that suits their farming practices the best. Small markets also mean that spare parts become difficult to obtain making maintenance of the pumps nearly impossible.

·      Farmers do not know how to actually use the devices due to a lack of technical training. Like the video suggests, information is needed to use the technology well.

·      The only way that motor pumps have actually been implemented is through large-scale project investments (rather than individual) and where the product is being marketed.

The video also suggests that there is:

·      A lack of access to flexible credit, preventing farmers from purchasing them in the first place –USD$250 for a motor pump is relatively high for a small-scale farmer (The Guardian 2013).

·      A lack of pump rental markets. A pump rental market is where entrepreneurs can rent out pumps, and/or provide their own irrigation service which could be an alternative for poorer farmers unable to purchase a pump for themselves.

I personally like the idea of pump rental markets. Not only would this reduce the need to teach each and every farmer wanting to use a motorised pump how to actually use it, but it would also eliminate the need for the individual purchasing of pumps which could be tedious to maintain on an individual basis post-purchase. Implementation of microfinance schemes and their access can be a long and slow process, especially given the unwillingness of lenders to provide agricultural loans (The Guardian 2013). Furthermore, I see pump rental markets as having a large multiplier effect – not only in terms of efficiency as entrepreneurs learn how best to use the pump with experience, but in terms of employment, as markets like these can create a diverse range of employment such as in maintenance, giving people additional opportunities. So although the relationship between groundwater and small-scale irrigation such as motor pumps may seem simple, there are many external factors that need to be considered, and investment externally by NGOs and government bodies should go towards expanding pump rental markets.