Farmer-led Irrigation – Alternative Saviours.

Woodhouse et al. (2017) defined farmer-led irrigation development as “a process where farmers assume a driving role in improving their water use for agriculture by bringing about changes in knowledge production, technology use, investment patterns and market linkages, and the governance of land and water.”  Such schemes are known to occur informally – and en masse – throughout sub-Saharan Africa, many of which not contributing to Africa’s official percentage of irrigated agriculture (6%) – this post will cover a few examples.

Furrow Irrigation, from Averbeke et al. (2011)

Furrow Irrigation

One example of farmer-led irrigation occurs in East and Southern Africa, where water is diverted from permanent mountain streams and springs, through large systems of interlinked hand-dug furrows, allowing for irrigation.  In South Africa, as Smit and Jacobs (2004) explain, native South Africans could only access irrigation through the use of hand-dug furrows, as opposed to the ‘modernised’ irrigation systems used by their white counterparts, due to South Africa’s dark racist history.  In Leeukloof, in the Western Cape Province, furrow irrigation is estimated to have occurred for over 100 years, sustaining their population, without causing any damage to surrounding hydrology in the process.  Although the area of irrigated land within these systems shrinks and grows alongside periods of drought and heavy rainfall, these systems still involve the artificial application of water onto cultivated land, and hence, are a method of irrigation.  In addition, large-scale irrigation schemes, such as those mentioned last week, are known to cause deterioration to their surrounding hydrological systems. Therefore, it can be argued that furrow irrigation methods are preferential to large-scale irrigation schemes due to their environmental sustainability. 

Shallow Groundwater Pumping

In many sub-Saharan regions, water basins are typified by valley bottoms that are relatively wet compared to their surrounding regions.  Such valley bottoms can be exploited for shallow groundwater pumping, for example, Woodhouse et al. explain that the World Bank has advocated for the use of pumps for irrigation within these areas in Nigeria since the 1980s – accounting for a 114,000 ha increase in the area of irrigated land.  However, similar farmer-led developments, using low-cost motorised pumps,  have occurred in other regions of Africa, like Malawi – accounting for a 61,9000 ha increase in the area of irrigated land – irrigation achieved without Western intervention. 

Petrol Pump Irrigation From Open Water Bodies

Similar to the shallow groundwater pumping mentioned above, Giordano et al. (2012) point to the wide-spread proliferation in the use of motorised pumps as a means of abstracting water from open water bodies for irrigation by small-hold farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.  Woodhouse et al. say that this proliferation has been primarily farmer-led, with groups of farmers often pooling money together in order to purchase the pumps – again without Western intervention. 

Urban Irrigation

Woodhouse et al. also expose the existence of small-scale farming in urban areas, whereby farmers use raw or diluted waste water, piped water and stream water to irrigate land for the cultivation of fruit and vegetables.  Danso et al. (2014) describe this practice in Accra, Ghana, which experiences a coastal savannah climate, with low rainfall.  Here, they describe how the national program ‘Operation Feed Yourself’ encouraged the population to cultivate land wherever possible to meet food demand, following the 1970s economic crises due to colonial liberation.  In Accra, this resulted in a legacy of almost 1000 ha of land still being used for small-scale irrigated agriculture in 2005 (between 0.01-2 ha per site), producing lettuce, cauliflower, tomatoes and much more.  However, the success of this farmer-led irrigation technique is limited by the use of untreated wastewater - Pesewu et al. (2017) found that within 40 samples of this wate, bacterial colony counts were nearly 36,000 times the World Health Organisation safe limit.  This is especially problematic if the fruit and vegetables irrigated with this water are eaten raw as the water samples contained E. coli – a bacteria whose infection has a death rate of around 3-5%.

Another disadvantage of farmer-led irrigation, as Woodhouse et al. explain, is that poor coordination between different farmers often means that water abstraction, by upstream farmers, leads to insufficient water supply for downstream irrigation.  However, this poor coordination could be rectified by the implementation of farmer-led formal irrigation institutions, setting up a framework for cooperation between farmers.  Therefore, it could be argued that instead of advocating for large-scale irrigation schemes, it would be more helpful for development organisations to assist the development of farmer-led irrigation institutions – institutions that are embedded within place-specific, cultural and historical contexts – for the effective expansion of irrigation within Africa’s Green Revolution.