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Irrigation can enhance agricultural production
2005-10-21 07:36:01
By Editor
The Government has earmarked more than 8.3bn/- for the 2005/06 season to irrigate 19,542 hectares of food crops, especially paddy, the Deputy Minister for Agriculture and Food Security, Dr Pius Mbawala, said at Mombo in Korogwe District, Tanga Region, during this year’s World Food Day celebrations.
This is a move in the right direction. Actually, it is long overdue considering that Tanzania has three big lakes – Victoria, Tanganyika and Nyasa — and numerous rivers that pour their waters in the Indian Ocean.
The amount of money Dr Mbawala mentioned is enough to put an average of 30,000 hectares under irrigation so that the nation can be self-sufficient in rice by the year 2017.
He is quoted by the press as saying that Tanzania has more than 29.3 million hectares that can be irrigated for paddy production.
We should, therefore, give priority to the production of paddy to augment the supply of food in the country.’
What he did not say is that government-sponsored irrigation can also be used in production of vegetables and fruits.
A recent press report said that Kenya has some 250,000 hectares of land that is used to produce horticultural products.
Considering that a large part of Kenya in north east is almost a desert, land that is used to produce fruits and other horticultural products is in the centre and in the west.
The most fertile land in Kenya is in the Great Rift Valley which starts in Malawi and almost bisects Tanzania. Unfortunately for us, we do not seem to value this fertile land for irrigation.
Granted that Dodoma Region is dry, its water table is high and artesian wells can be sunk for irrigated farming of not only maize but also of other food and cash crops.
It is possible that large-scale farming can be carried out in central and western Tanzania.
We basically depend on agriculture, and keep saying it since we attained independence more than 40 years ago.
Yet we are not serious about it. There is no rationale behind such abject apathy!
The majority of Tanzanians in rural areas still use the antiquated hand hoe. The result is that what we produce in our farms is just sufficient to feed us instead of making us exporters of cereals and other cash crops.
The FAO country representative, Louise Setshwaelo, was also quoted by the press as saying that the Food and Agriculturural Organisation will continue helping Tanzania in its efforts to carry out irrigated farming.
We, therefore, do not seem to understand why our government cannot use such FAO’s goodwill to accelerate modern farming in Tanzania.
The giant Rufiji River basin can easily become the breadbasket of not only East Africa but also Malawi and Zambia and other Central African countries.
If we have the support of FAO, there is no reason why we cannot help ourselves to become net exporters of food and cash crops.
It is high time we used whatever means at our disposal to become the biggest producers of farm produce in East and Central Africa.
Subsistent farming in Tanzania, especially that which is rain-fed, should be as dead and extinct as the dodo bird on the island of Madagascar.
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