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Revamping irrigation farming
2006-07-12 09:14:44
By Editor
Water masses are natural endowments. Unlike parts like West Africa where, for instance, rivers flow from dry hinterlands to wet equatorial areas, a great number of streams in East Africa do flow from relatively perennial catchment areas traversing huge expanses of dry lands.
Fortunately, Tanzania is not an exception. Surface water courses are ample, including some of the great lakes in the world.
These are endowments whose economic potentiality cannot be separated from the national development agendas.
Last year, the country experienced one of the severest food shortages in history. Billions of cash had been spent on procuring food relief supplies across the country at the sacrifice of other sustainable development endevours.
The expenditure was of course justified given the nature and character of the crisis the nation had been facing.
Amazingly though, while the reason behind national hunger was said to be due to prolonged drought, our rivers and lakes had never been dry.
In fact, all major rivers were perennial, feeding into the Indian Ocean and into lakes. But, we were all suffering from hunger.
The history human enterprise over crop and animal husbandries traces irrigation as an integral innovation for ensuring food security for different communities across the globe. It is not a recent novelty as some of us tend to think about.
Traditional irrigation methods have existed since hoary past, and were able to guarantee food security when rains were inadequate. Alternatively, they supported a system of crop rotation during dry seasons which ultimately augmented food stocks.
It is encouraging to see for the first time serious fiscal measures to rejuvenate some neglected methods of irrigation farming, while in the interim, allocating some expenditure to a select of modern irrigation projects.
Almost every district in this country has some potential for irrigation farming. Dishearteningly, not all districts have taken the trouble to identify such potentialities for exploitation.
Such a responsibility is part of governance and does not constitute an extramural type of duties.
This step is of great importance in determining costs involved and how to organize the farming activities.
For instance, a feasibility study at one of Kilosa’s paddy farming village found that only Tsh.10m was required to pump water from Wami stream and irrigate the village’s valley.
Astonishingly, the villagers’ could easily refund these costs in the first round of farming as cultivation could take place twice per year.
It is proper that our Members of Parliament have taken the issue of irrigation agriculture by its horns, but it is not always the subject of mega-irrigation projects which would improve farm productivity and address rural poverty at its roots.
At the same time, all irrigation activities require extension services for irrigable land call for scientific handling to conserve the quality of its soils. Otherwise, irrigation could be destructive.
And by extension, all catchment areas have to be scientifically conserved for these are the perennial fountains of water flows.
Their extinction will render irrigation farming a tale not come true.
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