Partner news

IWMI connects locals for collaborative efforts to expand solar irrigation in Ethiopia

January 9, 2023 by abbey.kunkle

With the support of the USAID-sponsored the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) and Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation (AfricaRISING), the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) organized a series of workshops, engaging stakeholders to facilitate the scaling of solar-based irrigation in different parts of Ethiopia.

Undertaken in partnership with Rensys Engineering Plc. and in collaboration with local government, the first workshops were organized in September 2022. Contributions from 155 participants helped to establish a better understanding of farmer market segments for solar innovation bundles at Wereta (near Bahir Dar) and Ziway. The workshops engaged farmers and others in the field to discuss land and water access, financial potential for investment, and farmer technology preferences.

In December 2022, IWMI and partners followed up with a workshop on ‘Linking demand and supply for irrigation technologies and services’ in Bahir Dar, Amhara region to develop demand-supply linkages for solar power-based for irrigation. Farmers, NGOs and government officials suggested ways to strengthen market linkages, especially to bridge the severe information and capacity gaps. Farmers expressed concerns about reliability and accessibility of services, recommending that suppliers work with existing local groups trained in irrigation and expand their services to solar technologies. As a starting point for information exchange, an ICT-based message platform was created with Rensys sales agents, extension agents, interested NGO staff, farmers, and young entrepreneurs.

Arranging ways for farmers to see how different solar pump models operate and perform in the field remains the most effective way to connect with potential clients. Rensys Engineering demonstrated the Lorentz Ps2-100 solar pump for 96 participants from NGOs, government offices of agriculture, energy and irrigation, farmer organizations, and private irrigation value chain actors. Over thirty farmers requested a follow up for purchasing a pump from Rensys, while MEDA (Mennonite Development Association) ordered Rainmaker Kubaw solar pumps for one of its projects.

Farmers look to solar irrigation: Building the irrigation equipment supply market in Ghana

January 9, 2023 by abbey.kunkle

November-December 2022

Will smallholder farmers invest in solar pumps to expand irrigated farming in Ghana? Studies point to the potential for solar irrigation in Ghana to enable farmers to adapt to climate change and to increase farmer incomes through various business models. But as farmers increasingly shift to self-supply in irrigation, the market is under the spotlight. While the current market system is fragmented and laden with risks, USAID-supported projects are building the foundation for a resilient irrigation equipment market. This is particularly urgent, given the onset of weather changes and increasing demand for irrigated produce.

The response by farmers and private sector actors is encouraging. Over 530 people attended workshops on solar irrigation in Jirapa (Upper West) and Tamale (Northern), while another 609 people attended workshops in Nandom (Upper West), Nalerigu (Northeast) and Bole (Savannah). Participants are primarily farmers but include companies and entrepreneurs, government, research institutions and NGOs. The workshops – aimed at ‘strengthening the sale and service networks for solar irrigation market linkages’ – were organized by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and Pumptech Ghana in November 2022 and co-funded by the USAID-sponsored Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) and Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation (AfricaRISING) projects.

Under the projects, IWMI enables market-based scaling of solar-based irrigation bundles through local demand-supply linkage workshops that facilitate direct linkages across private, public and research sectors. Jointly, participants identify financial opportunities for farmers’ investment in solar irrigation technologies, products, and services, and establish networks and collaborations for business opportunities. Discussions also highlighted the need for local distribution centers in rural districts and targeted training of extension officers and private service agents on solar-powered pumps. Rural and community banks discussed approaches to improve access to financial services for farmers to acquire solar technologies on credit.

Demonstrations for solar-powered irrigation pumps (SPIPs) at each workshop and in communities across 9 locations in the Upper West, Northeast, Northern and Savannah Regions led 223 potential clients to explore purchasing solar pumps from Pumptech. With more such activities to build robust sales and service networks, especially for solar irrigation, farmers can begin to look at the sun in a whole new light.

Small Scale Irrigation and Nutrition: Lessons from East and West Africa

October 17, 2022 by abbey.kunkle

by Dawit Mekonnen

Irrigation developers historically aimed to achieve water productivity and efficiency, and increase crop yields for food security, but this approach to irrigation may be slowly changing. A growing body of evidence is increasing our understanding of the contributions of small-scale irrigation development, that is irrigation technologies directly acquired by farmers for their own plots, not only to water security but also to food security and nutrition security. With a global food and nutrition crisis about to enter its fourth year, this year’s theme for World Food Day, “Leave NO ONE behind” calls upon us to look outside traditional food and nutrition security interventions—that are insufficient to reduce hunger and malnutrition in the face of today’s multiple, interlinking crises—to consider a broader set of nutrition-sensitive actions that can reach many and grow crisis resilience.

Since 2014, the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) with partners has been developing the most comprehensive evidence to date on the linkages between irrigation and nutrition outcomes of households, women, and children in rural Africa. The studies, implemented by the International Food Policy Research Institute with a range of partners, examine the potential and impact of small-scale irrigation as an intervention to grow nutrition under interlocking crises.

Building evidence through case studies

Irrigation can affect nutritional outcomes through multiple pathways, including through changes in production, increased income, improved water supply (e.g. WASH), and through affecting women’s empowerment. In addition to identifying pathways and developing frameworks, ILSSI studies have documented the relationships between irrigation and nutrition drawing on intra-household surveys from Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali and Tanzania. A longitudinal study of socioeconomic status, energy and nutrient intakes and hemoglobin concentration in ILSSI sites in Ethiopia, implemented in partnership with Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sustainable Intensification (SIIL)[RC(1] , showed a high seasonal variation in women’s diet, and the contribution of irrigation in improving diets and reducing their seasonality. Compared to non-irrigators, women in irrigating households had higher consumption of Vit-C and Calcium during the irrigation season, which helps to address a gap in data on linkages between water insecurity and micronutrient deficiencies.

But not only women in irrigating households show improved diets, but also children. A study drawing on panel data of irrigators and non-irrigators in ILSSI sites of Ethiopia and Tanzania showed that children in irrigating households in Ethiopia had better weight-for-height (WHZ) scores–0.87 standard deviations higher—than children in non-irrigating households. Confirming the resilience contribution of irrigation, the study also noted that in Tanzania, higher WHZ-scores were found in children under-five years of age in irrigating households who reported having experienced a drought in the 5 years preceding the survey.

In Northern Ghana, an ILSSI study found only a modest difference in the household dietary diversity score (HDDS) between irrigators and non-irrigators, but more significant increases in the consumption of animal source foods as well as significant differences in the consumption of fruits and vegetables, sugar and honey. As other studies have highlighted, consuming animal source foods have strong positive impacts on nutritional security, particularly of children.

In Mali, an ILSSI study supported by the USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) showed that irrigators are more likely to grow vegetables, fruits, and roots and tubers, which may help supply more nutrient-dense foods to the market for broader nutritional impact in rural communities. In addition, at household level, households with irrigation had significantly better dietary quality and diversity than non-irrigators, and data showed irrigators are more food-secure than non-irrigators. Irrigation also changed land use and labor allocation, as irrigated plots were more intensively used, with 22% and 17% higher use of improved varieties/inorganic fertilizers; 5 times the level of family labor input and more than 2 times the level of hired labor input compared to non-irrigated plots, showcasing irrigation’s contribution to growing rural employment, particularly in the lean season as well as its potential to reducing deforestation and land expansion.

Irrigation and resilience to climate change and weather extremes

Water and food insecurity are interlinked, worsening hunger where farmers rely on rainfed production and cannot access irrigation. Droughts cause backsliding from development gains and push people deeper into poverty. Irrigation dampens negative drought impacts. The ILSSI Ethiopia study found that among households who reported recent experience with drought, women in irrigating households had higher dietary diversity scores compared to women in non-irrigating households. In Tanzania, women in irrigating households also had higher dietary diversity scores (WDDS) compared to women in households without irrigation. Importantly, the impact of irrigation on women’s dietary diversity was more than doubled among households facing drought. The authors also showed that among households in Tanzania who reported having faced a drought shock, irrigating households had higher HDDS compared to non-irrigators. This study highlighted the ways in which irrigation contributes to climate adaptation and resilience, and reduces nutrition inadequacy during climate extremes.

Recent research has further documented the role of irrigation during the 2016 El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) drought in Ethiopia. Among rainfed farmers, the 2016 ENSO decreased net crop income by 37%: area cultivated reduced by 8% and the share of harvest sold declined by 10%. Overall, this worsened HDDS by 3%. However, irrigators affected by the ENSO event maintained their net crop income, area cultivated, share of harvest sold, and did not suffer from reductions in HDDS. The study provided further evidence that irrigation is a key climate smart agricultural intervention that improves the resilience of farming households in the face of climate extreme events.

Providing guidance for irrigation investments that improves water, food and nutrition jointly

A collaboration between IFPRI and the World Bank summarized the ILSSI findings in a guidance on improving the nutrition sensitivity of irrigation and agricultural water management directed at World Bank project managers, governments, NGOs and other investors. The guidance provides entry points and indicators for monitoring progress on nutrition-sensitive irrigation. Videos in English and French language provide a quick overview of the guidance and are being used by next users interested in addressing joint climate, water and nutrition crises. With support from USAID BHA, the guidance is currently localized to the Malian context with the help of local nutrition and irrigation experts.

The studies provide a comprehensive body of evidence of the strong effect of irrigation for households’ economic access to food and on nutritional benefits for women and children. Based on this evidence and associated guidance, the goals of irrigation have broadened beyond water productivity and yield gains—toward integrated investment approaches in food and nutritional security that might help get us closer to this year’s World Food Day theme of Leave NO ONE behind. By recognizing the interlinkages, nutrition-sensitive irrigation programs can help realize the full potential of small-scale irrigation interventions – and allow them to go beyond higher yields and water productivity to grow food and nutrition security– while also actively working toward avoiding adverse impacts on human health and nutrition.

ILSSI partner EcoTech Mali carries out awareness campaign across 30 villages

October 17, 2022 by abbey.kunkle

In collaboration with the Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation, last month, EcoTech Mali carried out an awareness campaign on the installation and use of solar pumps, as well as on irrigation and water retention techniques through workshops and demonstrations in 30 villages of 4 municipalities in the region of Koutiala.

Photos below show EcoTech Mali’s awareness campaign; photo credits ETM.

Practical demonstration of the pump and its monitoring application to representatives of the municipality of Zangasso

Technical workshop in the municipality of Fagui

Raising awareness of representatives of the Municipality of Zangasso in Koutiala

How can we address recurring global food and fuel crises? The role of solar powered irrigation

October 16, 2022 by abbey.kunkle

by Claudia Ringler and Hua Xie

It seems that joint food and energy crises have become the norm: Three have now occurred in just the last 15 years, driven by climate change and other human-made crises such as COVID-19 and the Russia- Ukraine war.

All three crises dramatically pushed up food and energy prices, as well as those of fertilizers, leading to an increase in the number of undernourished people worldwide (Figure 1). The number of hungry has now been on the rise for almost a decade now, and it is unclear if or when the global community will come together to implement interventions to turn this around.

Figure 1: Changes in global food and energy prices and GDP growth in low-and middle-income countries

Source: Headey and Hirvonen (2022) using data from FAO, the World Bank, and the IMF.

The three recent food-fuel price crises demonstrate that food and energy systems are interlinked and that these systems, in turn, are affected by continuing degradation of the environment and water resources. Addressing—and ultimately preventing—such crises is a complex global challenge. Encouraging small-scale actions in these systems that address climate change and pollution, and build sustainability and resilience, can play a key role. Solar irrigation pumps are a particularly promising technology in this regard.

How water, energy, food, and environmental systems in recent crises are interlinked

The 2007/08 crisis was triggered by innovations in bioenergy development—especially the use of maize as transportation fuel, putting food and fuel production in direct competition with each other—and was compounded by higher oil prices and a series of climate shocks. While water issues are not seen as a cause of the crisis, extreme climate events did affect agricultural production levels and water was diverted to grow crops for biofuels, thus reducing water availability for food production and other human needs. The 2011/12 crisis was caused by similar factors, with even more food being diverted for fuel and further climate shocks.

The current crisis began with the COVID-19 pandemic, which quickly spread due to poor public health management in many countries. The pandemic may also be tied to the underlying driver of environmental degradation causing increased human-wildlife interactions, allowing the easier spread of zoonotic diseases. The pandemic response in turn disrupted global transportation networks, including those for food, fertilizer, and fuel. As in previous crises, a series of climate shocks, heat waves, droughts, floods, and cyclones reduced food production in key breadbasket regions, as well as energy access and use and water security.

Small steps to break the fuel and food price crises

Can such crises be prevented? Unfortunately, it appears unlikely that the global community will come together to take decisive action to address them—the limited sharing of COVID-19 vaccines, continued failure to act collectively on climate change, and recurrent food and fertilizer export bans by key producers suggest that there is no will for the complex, coordinated global effort required. However, there are many small steps that individual governments can take, such as eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels. There are also many steps that each one of us can take, such as switching from personal cars to public transportation, reviewing and reducing our energy use, and re-evaluating our diets.

There are also many steps that farmers can take, including more judicious use of fertilizer, adopting improved agronomic practices and seed technologies and better and adapted use of irrigation technologies. Many of these actions would address the water, energy, and food price crises jointly. As an example, improved nutrient use efficiency of nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizers would both reduce water pollution and increase food security by lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

Solar irrigation pumps—a force to reckon with?

The switch from diesel to solar irrigation pumps is another way to help reduce fuel price spikes and also build climate resilience through improved water security at the farm and household level. Solar pumps eliminate the use of gasoline or diesel fuel for running irrigation pumps (and, for electric pumps, the need for electricity produced by burning fossil fuels). They thus decouple fuel from food price shocks for farmers. At larger scales, increased adoption of solar pumps dampen the transmission from fuel to food price spikes.

Solar pumps might well be a force to reckon with. Their costs have declined dramatically and they can democratize energy access in regions that either remain off-grid, such as much of rural sub-Saharan Africa, or where the reliability of electrical grids is poor, such as Pakistan. Solar-powered groundwater irrigation can increase and stabilize food production during dry seasons and droughts and thus counteract the food price shocks stemming from many extreme climate events.

Moreover, recent analyses using lifecycle analysis suggest that the technology is now highly favorable financially in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. For example, the breakeven cost of a solar irrigation systems drawing groundwater is US$2.50 per watt peak in central and Southern Africa for most crops and water application methods, that is, at that solar irrigation installation cost, diesel pumps are not competitive. If solar pump costs can be lowered further, to US$2 per watt peak, diesel pumps would lose their comparative advantage for half or more of irrigable crops in West and East Africa.

Moreover, as shown in Figure 2, the competitive edge of solar irrigation is growing further with climate change, as a result of complex interactions across higher solar irradiation levels, increased crop water demands and higher temperatures (the latter of which can negatively affect solar system performance). And this higher economic viability of solar over diesel pumps is irrespective of the food-security enhancing climate mitigation benefits of these systems.

Figure 2: Change in solar array cost per watt peak in sub-Saharan Africa under climate change: Areas in green indicate improved cost effectiveness of solar over diesel pumps by 2050 compared to the recent past

However, despite the low cost, climate resilience attributes, and increased agricultural productivity of solar irrigation pumps, few have been deployed in the low- and middle-income countries that would benefit most. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), as of 2019 less than 3% of the total solar water pump capacity in the world had been installed in Africa. Most solar pumps are in use in India, with 91% of the total installed MW, thanks to long-term government subsidies for the technology. But even in India, this translates only to about 300,000 pumps, compared to more than 5 million diesel pumps still in operation.

Thus, while the potential is large, implementation faces considerable finance and supply chain challenges. The USAID-supported Innovation Laboratory for Small-Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) has developed finance models that can expand inclusivity of access to this technology in Ghana and Mali, and the CGIAR NEXUS Gains Initiative is starting pilots to identify business and finance models in South Asia.

As with all technologies, the solar-powered irrigation pump is not a silver bullet that can strike at the heart of the water-energy-food-environment nexus on its own. But solar array by solar array, it can help farmers, and eventually all of us, to dampen recurrent fuel and interlinked food price spikes while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.