Johannesburg — Quietly, a new revolution is taking place in small villages and rural regions in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia: according to a new study conducted over three years, residents are developing new, more economical ways of drawing water for irrigation. This movement could turn the agricultural sector in developing countries around the world.

Johannesburg — Quietly, a new revolution is taking place in small villages and rural regions in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia: according to a new study conducted over three years, residents are developing new, more economical ways of drawing water for irrigation. This movement could turn the agricultural sector in developing countries around the world.

This study conducted by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a non-profit research center based in Sri Lanka, found that small farmers, tired of waiting for government help, found ways to access water pumps and build reservoirs or basins to collect rainwater in order to increase their production. And their efforts paid off.

“We were stunned by the scale of the movement,” said Meredith Giordano of IWMI, who coordinated the initiative. “Despite constraints such as high initial costs and poorly developed supply chains, small-scale farmers in Africa and Asia moved forward by using their own resources to finance and install irrigation systems. It is clear that farmers themselves are behind this trend.”

Surveys in Ghana, Ethiopia, and Zambia revealed that over 80 percent of owners of small irrigation systems purchased them using their own savings and those of their families. Banks and microcredit organizations rarely loaned money to buy this equipment and assistance from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or donors was infrequent in this area.

The buckets and watering cans used by most farmers in Saharan Africa are convenient for watering small plots, are cheap, and the running costs are insignificant. A pedal pump can cost up to $100. The whole family generally participates in the purchase and the operating costs are also zero. A motor pump can cost up to $250, but Giordano told IRIN that many farmers have found ways to get one. For example, in some regions of India, a farmer can buy a pump and rent it to other farmers when he is not using it. There are also systems for renting bicycle pumps: entrepreneurs cycle around rural areas and rent pumps attached to their luggage carriers.

“In many African countries, private irrigation by farmers themselves is already much more important than the public irrigation sector”

“The development of small-scale private irrigation is a well-established trend in South Asia and is now gaining ground in sub-Saharan Africa,” the study says. “In many African countries, private irrigation by farmers themselves is already much more important than the public irrigation sector,” Ms. Giordano said. In Ghana, for example, private irrigation by small-scale farmers employs 45 times more people and covers 25 times more land than public irrigation mechanisms.

Positive results

The results of these efforts are becoming visible. In the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, farmers who dug basins to irrigate their crops saw their incomes increase by 70 percent. A similar initiative conducted in Gursum, in the Ethiopian region of Oromia, was “so successful that the sub-district is now called 'no basin, no woman',” the study states. Rainwater harvesting was set up by the Oromia government in 2002 and basins were created with plastic sheeting. The farmers then went further by improving the water retention capacity of the basins by superimposing two plastic sheeting. These initiatives have increased agricultural production, so much so that “farmers who do not have a basin would have difficulty finding a woman, hence the nickname of the sub-district.”

The study also revealed that in Tanzania, during the dry season, half of the income of small-scale farmers came from irrigated vegetable production. In Zambia, the 20 percent of smallholder farmers who grow vegetables during the dry season earn 35 percent more income than others.

A considerable impact

Researchers are also looking at how these technologies (the use of motor pumps, small reservoirs, or the diversion of waterways by communities) could reduce poverty. They concluded that the growth and impact of these technologies would be significant. Motor pumps, for example, could be provided to at least 185 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, generating an income of $22 billion per year. To calculate profits, the study took into account several variables such as market access, investment costs, and the presence of natural water sources.

The results are not surprising, considering that in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), only three percent of the water drawn is used for irrigation and four percent of the arable land is irrigated. The IWMI study estimated that over 80 percent of farmers use watering cans or buckets to draw water for their crops. Similarly, in South Asia, small farmers use rudimentary irrigation methods and rely in particular on the monsoon to water their plants.

However, the study warns its readers that an uncontrolled development of water management by smallholders involves risks. “The poorest farmers, especially women, still struggle to find the resources they need to access these technologies, which could lead to greater inequalities. And if farmers participate in making water freely accessible for all, the supply in some regions could decrease to an unsustainable level.”

The study recommends that governments and local authorities pay attention to what is happening on the ground and support them with measures to increase access to loans and improve agricultural extension services, including by teaching better agricultural techniques.