Innovation Lab For Small Scale Irrigation

Innovation Lab For Small Scale Irrigation

Student interview

Student interview: New technologies could help farmers boost traditional crops in Tanzania

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Paul Reuben Mwinuka is currently working as senior technologist at the Department of Engineering Sciences and Technology at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania. His research interests include agricultural water and nutrients management, rainwater harvesting, and precision agriculture. He joined the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) capacity development program as a PhD student in 2017, when he was researching precision agriculture and in particular how remote sensing technology can be used to optimize water and nitrogen for neglected horticultural species, such as African eggplant.

What are the most important findings from your research on how to optimize use of water and nutrients for growing African eggplant?

To find out the best combinations of water and nitrogen for this specific crop, I investigated whether it was possible to use mobile phone thermal imaging and multispectral imaging from drones to assess plants’ nutrient status. I also studied whether the ratios of different channels of light reflected from the plant canopy (multispectral vegetation indices) can help us assess the interaction between water and nitrogen in irrigated African eggplant. This is possible because the absorption and reflection of solar radiation within the plant differs depending on each plant’s condition.

Paul Reuben Mwinuka performing fieldwork in Tanzania.

The study observed that the optimum application of water and nitrogen in irrigated African eggplant production under tropical sub-humid conditions was lower than what had been recommended in previous studies, by 20% and 25% respectively. This means that farmers can invest in less fertilizer and use less water, but still get an optimum yield.

What is your view on the challenges farmers will face when trying to apply exactly the right amount of irrigation water and nutrients for maximum yields?

I would advise farmers in Tanzania to follow these research results when they grow African eggplant, as this will help them to cut down fertilizer and pumping costs as well as improve their productivity.

The challenge is often that current recommendations are based on either water trials or nitrogen trials, but hardly ever the two in tandem. This means that the recommendations maximize the quantity of both water and nitrogen. Our findings showed that in areas with fertilizer scarcity, optimal yield could still be achieved by using just 79% of recommended nitrogen, whereas in water-limiting conditions, optimal yields would require 187 kg/ha nitrogen per season. This allows farmers, depending on their resources, to define optimum water and nutrient strategies as they may not always have access to both in abundance. In other words, if farmers are short on for example water, they can adjust their application of fertilizer to get optimum yields and vice versa. The main challenges in managing the water and fertilizer inputs in this way is related to the costs and availability of these inputs in the farmer’s area.

New technologies, such as drones and mobile phone thermal imaging, can help identify the best combination of water and nitrogen when growing African eggplant. Photos provided by Paul Reuben Mwinuka.

 What is the role of small scale irrigation in Tanzania? Could you imagine a particular potential for neglected horticultural species, such as African eggplant?

Small scale irrigation in Tanzania plays an important role in ensuring food security and nutrition. Small scale irrigators supply a significant amount of vegetables in the market during dry seasons. African eggplant, though neglected in terms of improvements, is one of the highly produced and consumed vegetables due to its nutritional benefits. The crop also has a long shelf life and can be transported to the market with minimum losses, which is something that makes it particularly popular with many small scale irrigators. Farmers could increase the yield of African eggplant by more than 40% if they put my findings into use.

What did you learn from doing work with ILSSI on agriculture and smallholder farmers? 

Under the ILSSI project, I collaborated with researchers from different countries, which helped me build a bigger network and taught me the importance of collaborating with researchers with different expertise. The experience improved my understanding of existing opportunities and challenges facing small scale farmers. The ILSSI project has also exposed me to different water and nitrogen management technologies, such as motorized water pumps, drip systems design and installation, moisture sensors, thermal imagers, and drones, and helped show how these technologies can boost small scale farming.

What will be your next step in your career in water and agriculture research?

My next step in agricultural research is to address the challenge of low water and nitrogen use efficiency in African eggplant in areas with different climates. I expect my research to result in guidelines on how to grow more and better African eggplant in different places and under different climatic conditions.

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Student interview: Identifying the best water management practices and technologies for sustainable irrigation in Ethiopia

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Desalegn Tegegne is a research officer at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), and based in the Nile Basin and East Africa Office, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He joined the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) capacity development program as a graduate student in 2015, while he completing his MSc degree at Arba Minch University. ILSSI supported his MSc thesis, “Assessment of water demand, water and crop productivity of the selected fodder varieties under small scale irrigation using wetting front detectors”.

What did you learn from the research you undertook on the use of technologies to improve water productivity on selected fodder crops?

Although irrigation could potentially boost the production of livestock fodder, this practice is not common in Ethiopia. Therefore, we need to integrate fodder production with crop production to improve the livelihoods of the rural poor. Most of the time, farmers face a problem of not having enough fodder to feed their cattle. At the end of dry season, when it is time for farmers to plow their fields, draft animals are weak due to feed shortages. However, feed shortages occur not only during the dry season, but all year. At the same time, the potential irrigable land is underutilized due to a scarcity of surface water, but despite the presence of shallow groundwater.

Desalegn Tegegne joined ILSSI’s capacity development program in 2015. He now works with the International Water Management Institute in Ethiopia.

To overcome these challenges, IWMI—under the ILSSI project—has identified and piloted water-lifting technologies for small scale irrigators as well as irrigation-scheduling technologies for irrigated fodder production in accordance with the available water sources. Farmers who used the on-farm water management technologies, such as wetting-front detectors, saved on water for irrigation, while improving their fodder crop and water productivity. According to my research findings, providing appropriate water management advice needs to be combined with information on appropriate water-lifting devices, as a function of the available water resources.

How, in your view, can innovative technologies such as wetting-front detectors, support farmers to irrigate more and more efficiently?

Proper on-farm irrigation practices improve the yield per unit area of land and per unit of water applied, because they facilitate equal water distribution and uniform crop growth, while preventing drainage and nutrient leaching and loss. In this way, technologies such as wetting-front detectors can guide farmers’ irrigation and in that way improve crop and water productivity.

  • Installation.
  • Wetting-front detector.
  • Irrigating fodder crops.
  • Farmer training.
  • Harvested fodder crops, ready for livestock.

How have you applied this learning and how does it influence your current work?

Given that my educational background is in water resources, irrigation management, and engineering, working on irrigation technologies is interesting for me. The technologies we used for field experiments were simple to use and they helped farmers to manage their irrigation. That’s why the field experiments were successful. My current work in IWMI focuses on analyzing soil moisture and nutrients as well as evaluating crop and water productivity of different on-farm water management tools. In that way, all the practical lessons I got while I did my MSc under the ILSSI’s capacity development program were very useful for my current work. 

What is your view on the role of irrigation—especially small scale—as climate change impacts intensify?

Irrigation is one way to improve farmers’ resilience under changing climatic conditions, through increasing food production. Using available surface water and groundwater resources, small scale irrigation can positively contribute to intensifying crop–livestock mixed farming systems. It is also a means of income generation for the smallholders.

What do you hope to achieve as a result of your current work?

In my current work from IWMI, I am planning to scale out the on-farm water management technologies, such as wetting-front detectors and chameleon sensors. These technologies are essential for smallholder farmers to improve their irrigation efficiency and increase crop and water productivity. For effective scaling of best on-farm water management practices, I will train farmers and extension agents.

Student interview: Finding the right crop varieties for irrigated fodder production and livestock benefits in Ethiopia

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Misba Abdela is a lecturer and PhD student at Bahir Dar Institute of Technology, Bahir Dar University, in Ethiopia. In March 2020, he joined the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) as a PhD graduate fellow, supported by the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI). Abdela previously worked with ILSSI researchers to study the effect of deep tillage on groundwater recharge as part of his MSc work.

Misba Abdela doing fieldwork in Ethiopia. Photo: Fikadu Tessema.

You have won a fellowship to conduct your PhD research on irrigated fodder cultivations. How did you get interested in this topic?

In Ethiopia, livestock play a vital role in smallholders’ livelihood by providing food, cash income, farm power, and other inputs such as manure to improve crop production. However, the productivity of livestock has remained very low due to various constraints, with feed shortages—both in quantity and quality—being the major one.

Feed shortages are aggravated by limited investment in feed and forage development and by the increased expansion of cropland, to the extent of encroaching into grazing land. As a result, the ‘business-as-usual’ approach to livestock feed sourcing is no longer a viable option, and there is an urgent need to optimally use available land, water, and capital resources to produce high-quality fodder for a sustainable livestock feed supply and production system. The increasing demand for livestock products, together with the shortage of feed and of the complex layers of challenges posed by climate change, justifies the need for alternative feed production and supply systems in the nation.

Before I joined this fellowship, I was doing research on farmer-managed irrigated fodder production, funded by the Appropriate Scale Mechanization Consortium (ASMC) project in collaboration with ILRI and Bahir Dar Institute of Technology, under which farmers received solar pumps (Maji pumps) and water storage tanks for irrigation use. While conducting this research, I understood farmers’ willingness to engage more in fodder production and their interest in potential alternative fodder crops with higher regenerative capacity and biomass yield per unit of land. Therefore, I was very happy when I got the opportunity to continue my PhD research in the area of irrigated fodder production. 

What’s a poorly understood aspect of irrigated fodder cultivation?

Information on the suitability of fodder varieties, and their responses to nutrient and water when they are produced under irrigation, is largely lacking in the Highlands of Ethiopia. Therefore, the main aim of our study is to investigate the performances of selected fodder species under different nutrient and moisture-input regimes.

Particularly, our study will explore yields and nutritional value of ten selected species and cultivars of fodder under optimal moisture conditions, under the conditions of drought stress, and under different nutrient application rates. We will also explore viable economic and agronomic scenarios of irrigated fodder production within the smallholder farmer setting in Ethiopia.

Misba Abdela working to identify fodder varieties with the highest biomass per unit of land. Photo: Fikadu Tessema.

What would be the gains of scaling up irrigated fodder production and who could benefit?

Scaling up fodder production would have great benefits. It would solve the feed challenge in local communities. Availability of a high-producing forage for livestock would benefit women by reducing the time they spend looking for feed; it would improve food security and household nutrition because of improved livestock productivity (more milk and milk products such as cheese and butter).

Also, producing high-quality fodder crops would reduce free grazing and allow farmers to adopt a ‘cut-and-carry feeding system’ – cutting and carrying feed to the animals in their corrals, rather than letting the animals roam free. In turn, zero or reduced grazing then create opportunity for girls to attend school as it is otherwise often the girls who are often kept home from school to look after the cattle.

Fodder production would also bring other benefits to the landscape: Fodder crops like Napier grass are deep rooted, and planting these on a large scale would minimize runoff as well as soil and nutrient loss from farm fields. This would result in reduced soil nutrient losses and contaminant fluxes into Lake Tana, and it would help to combat the rapidly expanding water hyacinth, which is endangering the lake. At a larger scale, limiting the growth of water hyacinth will in turn help to regulate water flow downstream, to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) reservoir.  

What are the biggest challenges to making irrigated fodder cultivation more widespread?

Identifying the major challenges to making irrigated fodder production more widespread might require more studies. Some of the major challenges may include farmers’ awareness in the area of irrigated fodder – for example, farmers might prefer to produce and irrigate vegetables or cereal crops rather than fodder crops due to a lack of knowledge on the comparative advantages. Another major challenge is market linkages, as it is difficult for farmers to get seeds of different fodder crops and to sell the excess fodder that they produced. 

What do you hope your work can contribute to in the future?

At the end of this research, we hope we will be able to identify the best fodder crops that are suitable for the agro-climatic conditions of the Ethiopian Highlands. Improved fodder crops—both in quantity and quality—would mean fodders with higher biomass per unit of land, higher regenerative capacity, higher production per unit of water and nutrients inputs, higher nutritional quality, and higher cost-benefit ratios. Identifying these best-bet fodder crops would solve the feed problem of the communities, improving the livestock production, incomes, and livelihoods of farmers in the nation. 

Student interview: Working with the private sector to find acceptable solutions to farmers’ challenges

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Habtamu Muche is currently working as a lecturer at the University of Gondar, Ethiopia. In 2016, he joined ILSSI’s capacity development program as a graduate student, while enrolled at Bahir Dar Institute of Technology, Bahir Dar University. For two years, Habtamu Muche studied the how the Berken plow can be used to improve infiltration and crop productivity in the Highlands of Ethiopia. He carried out his MSc thesis together with researchers at Bahir Dar University and the International Water Management Institute, funded through ILSSI.

You are a co-author of a paper on the benefits of using the Berken plow in the Ethiopian Highlands. How did you get interested in this topic?

Conventional tillage is the major cause of soil and water losses in Ethiopia. For thousands of years, farmers in Ethiopia practiced repeated cross-plowing with the traditional tillage implement, the Maresha. Long-term use of the Maresha is believed to create a hardpan, thereby restricting water movement and root growth, while decreasing yield of crops. In 2015, we tested deep tillage through manual digging and learned that breaking the hardpan can increase rainwater infiltration. However, we did not have the right implement for farmers to practice deep tillage. We heard that a new tillage implement, known as the Berken, had been developed by Aybar Engineering to enable farmers to break the hardpan. We initiated a study to assess its impact on hydrological and biophysical processes.  

Habtamu Muche collecting a soil sample in the Ethiopian Highlands.
Habtamu Muche collecting a soil sample in the Ethiopian Highlands.

What’s the most unexpected thing you found?

Looking at the Berken plow, we first thought it was a simple modification of the Maresha, with little or no impact. However, we found that the Berken affects several hydrological variables in positive ways. For example, the tillage depth increased more than we expected and disrupted the restrictive hardpan layer because the plow cuts the soil deep at the center and shallow on the sides. Second, the infiltration rate was significantly improved—tilling the soil at that depth increases the microscopic channels in the soil that allow water to move from the cultivated surface and to the subsurface layer of the soil. We also saw that rainwater runoff and sediment yield reduced because each furrow laid along the contour of the steep slopes helped slow the movement and generation of runoff and sediment. Finally, root development and grain yield also improved. The higher water infiltration might have led to more moisture being available deeper in the soil, and that has positively affected maize grain yield.   

The Berken plow was invented by private sector entrepreneur Aybar Engineering.
The Berken plow was invented by private sector entrepreneur Aybar Engineering. Photo: Habtamu Muche.

What did you learn about how innovation and new inventions like the Berken plow come about?

I have learned how a simple innovation like the Berken plow solves a great challenge we faced in improving infiltration. It is not acceptable to tell farmers to manually dig 60 cm into the soil to break up the hardpan. So, I learned that we need to work more on innovations to solve farmers’ problems.   

What was it like to work on a research trial with a private sector entrepreneur?

After we realized that breaking the hardpan was effective in reducing rainwater runoff, thereby improving infiltration, we wanted to test the new Berken plow in the field. We helped the inventors at Aybar Engineering by sharing our research results. It is interesting to work with the private sector because they are working on the ground with farmers. They are manufacturing and selling tools that have good impacts for farmers. As a graduate student, I felt happy to work on a tool that is going to be used by many farmers.

What do you hope to work on in the future?

In the future, I have planned to work on the impact of the Berken at the watershed scale. Conservation structures, such as soil bunds, may become more effective if farmers can use the Berken to plow the land in between the conservation structures.

Student interview: Investigating how gender matters for irrigation and nutrition

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In 2014, Elizabeth Bryan joined ILSSI’s capacity development program for graduate students, and she investigated gender and small scale irrigation, as well as the linkage between irrigation and nutrition. Today, Bryan is a senior scientist in the Environment and Production Technology Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), where she focuses on water resources management and climate change adaptation and gender.

What issues were you studying, while you were working with ILSSI?

With respect to gender and irrigation, we explored the barriers that women face to adopting, using, and benefitting from technologies for small scale irrigation. We also looked at how adopting small scale irrigation may influence various aspects of women’s empowerment, such as their level of participation in agricultural decisions, control over income and productive assets, and time burden.

Elizabeth Bryan, IFPRI.
Elizabeth Bryan, IFPRI.

The results across the countries we have worked in (Ethiopia, Ghana, and Tanzania) are varied, given different gender roles in agriculture, social norms, and available systems, technologies, and practices for small scale irrigation.

Our findings on irrigation and nutrition highlight two main pathways through which irrigation can improve diets and nutrition outcomes: through changes in production and increased income. Irrigation enables greater production and consumption of more nutrient-dense crops, such as vegetables, that improve diet quality. Being able to irrigate also enables production during the dry season, increasing availability of food during these times. Farmers use the income from selling irrigated crops to purchase foods that improve household diets, such as milk and eggs. Irrigating farmers appear to be more resilient to drought, thanks to their improved nutritional status. Findings on the links between irrigation and nutrition were summarized in a guidance note by The World Bank to support more nutrition-sensitive approaches to irrigation investments.

Gender matters for these linkages between irrigation and nutrition because women have different preferences for which crops are grown under irrigation, how these crops are used – whether for sale or consumption – and how income from the sale of irrigated crops is spent.

What was the most surprising thing you found?

The gender sensitivity of many irrigation interventions is low, meaning that they fail to consider the linkages between gender and irrigation. This is due to limited capacity on gender in many implementing organizations and agencies. However, there is interest, including from the private sector, in utilizing strategies to better reach and benefit women through irrigation.

Another surprising finding is that when households adopt modern irrigation technologies in northern Ghana, men tend to take over irrigation activities. Rather than feeling excluded, many women were relieved not have to participate in manual irrigation, which they considered a burdensome task, and to have more time to devote to other income-earning activities.

How did the work you did with ILSSI inform the next steps in your career? 

After I finish the remaining research papers on my plate, I hope to develop some guidance for implementing partners to adopt more gender-sensitive strategies. New modalities are emerging for how to expand small scale irrigation technologies, such as through group-based or rental arrangements, and the gender implications of these also need to be examined so that these interventions are inclusive and benefit women.

What is your advice to other students looking to work with ILSSI or other Feed the Future innovations labs?

The Feed the Future Innovation Labs are a great way to engage different partners, including cross-disciplinary researchers, development practitioners, policy-makers, and donors. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate with so many inspiring people, who are dedicated to tackling some of the greatest development challenges.

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