Innovation Lab For Small Scale Irrigation

Innovation Lab For Small Scale Irrigation

irrigation

Enhancing Groundwater Governance through Experimental Games in Ghana

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by Emmanuel Obuobie*, Claudia Ringer*, Hagar El Didi*, Wei Zhang*

Thousands of farmers living in the Keta and Anloga districts of Ghana depend on groundwater from the Keta strip for producing vegetables and other food crops for consumption and income generation. The Keta strip lies between a salty lagoon (Keta lagoon) and the sea (Gulf of Guinea), along the East Coast of Ghana. The two districts fall within the dry equatorial climatic region, which is the driest part of Ghana. The main occupation of the people are farming, fishing and trading. Farming is done all year-round, using groundwater from shallow unconfined aquifers within depths of about 15 m. Crops grown include carrots, tomatoes, pepper, okra, onion, lettuce, potatoes, maize and cassava. Farming in the Keta and Anloga districts is impossible without irrigation because of relatively low rainfall (about 800 mm), a long dry season of about six months, long dry spells within the rainfall season, high annual evaporation (about 1800 mm) and sandy soils.

An irrigator drawing water from a well to irrigate her crops at Whuti – Anloga district, Ghana (Photo credit: Emmanuel Obuobie)

Farmers in the two districts abstract groundwater through large diameter open concrete lined wells and small diameter (2-4 inches) piped tube wells, to irrigate farm sizes between 0.05 and 1 hectares. The groundwater is recharged mainly from rainfall. The recharge rate is relatively high (estimated at about 20% of the annual rainfall). Some of the key challenges that groundwater irrigators are dealing with are declining groundwater tables, insufficient freshwater during the peak of the dry season (February/March) due to low groundwater tables and high evaporation, and saltwater intrusion; all of these impede crop productivity. Most farmers cope by reducing the volume of water used for irrigation but others cope by developing multiple wells for abstracting more water and relocating wells with salty water to locations with freshwater. There are no functioning institutions that support farmer collaboration on water resources; instead farmers operate as individuals. This brings into question the sustainability of groundwater irrigation in the Keta and Anloga districts.

Source: Figure 3 in: Duku et al. (2022).

In December 2022, an intervention in the form of an experimental groundwater game, followed by community discussions of lessons learnt from the game was implemented in 10 communities in the two districts, to improve awareness of the importance of resource governance, with the expectation of enhancing collective action toward more sustainable use and management of groundwater resources, and ultimately to sustain the livelihoods of farmers. The activity was funded by USAID through the Feed the Future Innovation Laboratory for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) project and implemented by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), CSIR-Water Research Institute, the University for Development Studies and the University of Ghana.

In each of the communities, three sets of groundwater games were played by groups of men and women irrigators separately. Each group accessed water from a common source, cultivated crops of their choice and farmers made individual decisions on farm size and number of plots cultivated. It was assumed that only the farm size cultivated had an effect on the volume of groundwater used for simplicity. In the first round of the game, farmers made decisions on farm size without discussing with other members of their group (no communication); in the second round, farmers discussed cultivation ideas with their group members but made individual decision on cultivation. In the last round of the game, farmers communicated within their groups and elected to make rules to govern the farm size cultivated by each farmer and by extension the groundwater resources withdrawn, with sanctions for those farmers who did not comply with the rules (communication with group-elected rules). The game was followed with a debriefing session that included the larger community. The group discussion focused on the sharing of lessons from the groundwater game and farmers’ practical experiences on groundwater management.

Three months after implementing the intervention, an endline survey was conducted in the ten communities and the data were compared to that of a baseline survey, which was conducted prior to the game intervention, to evaluate the effects of the intervention on the communities understanding and management of groundwater resources.

In the baseline survey preceding the games, farmers indicated that, there were no rules or arrangements for managing groundwater in their communities. Irrigators could cultivate as many plots as they wanted and have as many groundwater wells as they could afford, with little or no consideration for the long-term sustainability of the groundwater and their livelihoods. Generally, communities held the belief that groundwater could not be permanently depleted and therefore were strongly opposed to making rules to regulate when and how much to abstract.  

Community debriefing meeting at Woe – Anloga district, Ghana (Photo credit: Emmanuel Obuobie)

Preliminary results from the endline survey show limited actions in response to the intervention at the community level, such as the establishment of institutions or rules on how much groundwater to abstract and when. However, there was an observed improvement in the attendance of community meetings for discussing community development issues including on water, health and hygiene; and improvement in participation in communal labour for cleaning communal facilities and places such as markets, beaches and drains. In addition, communities recalled learning through the game about the depletable nature of groundwater and the need to manage groundwater use. They understood the importance of adopting practices to help manage water use. Community beliefs shifted away from rejection of rules to govern groundwater use (at baseline) to understanding the need for collective action to manage the shared resource, though some communities still maintained that rules would be difficult to establish and enforce. Comparatively, several changes could be observed at the individual level. Actions reported by individual farmers included a reduction in plot size or number of farm plots cultivated, a reduction in number of wells on individual farms; a reduction in cropping intensity, and a reduction in the number of hours irrigated for every round of irrigation.

It might well take several more months or even years to see the full impact of the groundwater intervention. This is not surprising given how long it takes to change long-held understandings and beliefs of how groundwater systems operate. One thing is clear however: we cannot ensure sustainable groundwater-supported livelihoods without changing mental models and the way we develop and manage groundwater in this part of Ghana or anywhere else in the world.

  1. Senior Research Scientist, Water Research Institute – Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ghana ↩︎
  2. Director, Natural Resources and Resilience – International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), USA ↩︎
  3. Senior Research Analyst; Natural Resources and Resilience – International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), USA ↩︎
  4. Senior Research Fellow; Natural Resources and Resilience – International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), USA ↩︎

Upcoming study on the impact of solar-powered pumps in vegetable production in Mali

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by Rosaine Yegbemey, World Vegetable Center

Vegetable production in Mali has increased rapidly over the past decades. A lot of vegetable producers continue to irrigate their fields using watering cans and buckets, which is hard work and limits the scale of the operation. Nowadays, motorized water pumps including solar-powered pumps are increasingly available to Malian farmers, although adoption is still low. These pumps offer great potential to produce more, reduce drudgery, and reduce risk. However, scientific evidence is lacking on the potential benefits and costs, particularly among vegetable farmers. Such information is important to guide the scaling of the technology. 

Photo credit: Jean-baptiste Tignegre, WorldVeg

Against this backdrop and within the framework of the USAID Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI), the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) started an evaluation study to assess the multiple impacts of solar-powered pumps in irrigated vegetable production in Mali. The study will focus on aspects of gender, cost of production, risk, household income and quality of diets.

The study will use a mixed-method approach, combining quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods. Qualitative methods such as focus group discussions and in-depth personal interviews will be used to collect information from local irrigation suppliers and farmers and understand what type of farmers are adopting solar-powered pumps, as well as their experiences with the technology. Quantitative methods will rely on a farm survey of adopters and non-adopters and apply a quasi-experimental evaluation design using Propensity Score Matching (PSM). The data collection is scheduled to start in late July or early August 2022 and first results should be available toward the end of the year.

Student Interview: Paving the way for young women in STEM with excellence in academia and industry

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Meet Dayan Yenesew, a 2022 graduating class student in software engineering at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia.

Meet Dayan Yenesew, a 2022 graduating class student in software engineering at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia.

Tell us about yourself, your current role and your university.

I enjoy mentoring my juniors and educating young people on how to program. I also volunteer in communities around my university, including Women Tech Maker Bahir Dar, Google Developer Group Bahir Dar, and the Developer Student Club. My ultimate goal in life is to become a strong role model for young females by excelling in both academia and industry – paving the way for more women to enter the technology field.

What has the research process been like for you in the Seifu Maker Space at Bahir Dar University under the challenge supported by the Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation?

There were many applicants for the Hack-a-Thon organized by IWMI under the ILSSI project, but only 6 teams with about 30 members passed the initial screening stage. We attended a three-day human-centered design (HCD) training and took a field trip to a farm to identify the challenges facing farmers. After the HCD course, we conducted research and selected a challenge that we felt connected to from the field trip. Following extended idea-generation, we presented our proposal along with the other six teams. My squad was one of the two winners.

I’ve been eager and passionate to work on a project that speaks to me personally. I witnessed how difficult it was for my rural cousins to purchase solar pumps and home systems because there were no trustworthy vendors. I have a relative who lost his savings after being duped by a vendor to buy a sub-par solar panel for an irrigation water pump. Even though I sleep less than five hours every night because of class work and a final year project, it has been an exciting trip for me to work on a project that I know will address a real person’s problem.

What challenges did you identify in your project and how will others benefit from your solution?

As part of our project, we are creating a digital and sales app for Rensys Engineering PLC. We identified difficulties after studying the company’s current system, and then came up with solutions that can benefit both farmers and the company.

Farmers will get direct access to the price list, which will enable them to purchase solar items at a reasonable price and not get duped by local vendors who provide false information and low quality products. Farmers will also more easily find the location and contact information of the regional agents, and information about solar products in voice format and in a native language. If needed, farmers can access toll-free call centers for assistance, which will help them easily reach Rensys for after-sales support and maintenance, which they lacked before.

Rensys as a business will benefit from our app by streamlining orders and distribution of solar pumps into a simple and easy process with local and regional sales agents, while reducing the workload with a system generates sales analytics reports. They will have more control over prices between regional and local sales agents; previously, local sales agents would increase the price beyond the official Rensys price and charge farmers extra. Rensys will also be able to manage inventory for management of regional agents and warehouses, and manage future orders and marketing with statistics on products most frequently purchased in regions, and stop selling unpopular or defective goods.

From what your experience so far, what is the most surprising or outstanding thing you have learned? How did it change your approach to learning?

The concept of human-centered design I have learned in the Seifu BiT Maker Space forever changed how I approach problems. I found it challenging at first, because I wasn’t adapted to this way of thinking. It was both a fantastic experience and difficult to put into practice. This experience taught me how flexible and adept I can be. As a team, we had to understand people’s problems through their eyes rather than our own subjectively. We did research and went on a field visit to identify challenges using human-centered design thinking. It was hard at first because our minds frequently reverted to the old way of thinking. Through perseverance and practice over the last three months, I have mastered this approach and applied it to my final year project, too.

We were also matched with a fantastic mentor by the Seifu BiT Maker Space. Being given the chance to follow their lead has significantly altered my career. I never thought having a mentor like them would allow me to advance as quickly as I did. They imparted their knowledge and experience, tracking our efforts and helping us identify our mistakes. I’m grateful that they have been so generous with their time and effort.

The last three months have been incredibly significant in my life. Seifu BiT Maker Space has opened so many doors for me. The people I met and the experiences I have had are unparalleled. The tight-knit relationships with staff and my peers are what I am going to miss most about the maker space. I regret not finding it sooner and will be forever indebted to the center. This project stands out from ordinary classes since it is applicable. By putting all the theoretical ideas I’ve learned over the previous five years to use, we tackled a real-world problem facing farmers and businesses. This project has allowed me to practice my leadership, teamwork, analytical, and problem-solving skills as well as demonstrate my capacity for multitasking and high-pressure situations. I am confident that this ability I have gained will be useful to me in my future profession.

Finally, what advice would you give other women in science, based on your experiences?

In high school, physics was one of my favorite classes, and I wanted to major in it. However, my family opposed this decision, believing it to be absurd. I also couldn’t identify a role model so I started to doubt myself, and experienced imposter syndrome. As a person, it is hard to imagine what you do not see. So I went to the software engineering department.

In university, I still struggle to find mentors and role models. Inspired by this experience, I started to develop a platform (website and mobile application) as my final year project, which aims to raise the aspiration of girls and to give girls role models that can expand their horizons. It will feature successful women in business, politics, science, engineering, mathematics – connecting girls to an interested high achieving university student through mentorship.

I strongly believe that by providing girls with environments that inspire them to be their best selves, encourage non-gender norms and expectations, and expose them to a variety of different areas such as science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), we can make a difference.

I know being a woman in STEM is not always an easy route. I advise my fellow women in STEM to battle against the system, demand what they are entitled to, and alter the system for future generations of women.

Ghanaian farmers use solar-powered irrigation to innovate and diversify

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by Nicole Lefore, Director of Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI)

During a recent field visit in Ghana, I experienced firsthand how farmers are willing to invest in solar-powered irrigation and use it to experiment, diversify, and adapt to climate change. Talking with these frontrunner farmers can teach us important lessons about how to enable even more smallholders, through better access to credit and stronger value chains, to benefit from small scale irrigation.

For the past few years, we have seen solar-powered irrigation emerge as a promising, climate-smart solution for smallholder farmers to increase their incomes and improve their livelihoods and nutrition. However, for most farmers, investing in pumps and photovoltaic panels still represents a significant risk. So far, this has been hampering large-scale uptake of the technology.

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) is working to find different ways to enable more smallholders to make the investment, without putting their livelihoods at risk. For example in Ghana, we are partnering with PEG Africa, a private sector provider of solar-powered pumps, to find ways to reach farmers ‘at the bottom of the pyramid’. This year, PEG Africa’s game-changing asset-based financing solution has enabled several dozen farmers to purchase solar-powered pumps on credit, without the usual collateral or credit history required for a loan.

During my recent visit to Ghana, I discovered how these investments are prompting farmers to push the boundaries of diversification and to explore how they can make the best return and gain the most benefit at farm level. The solar-powered pumps are changing farmers’ practices, profitability, and plans for the future.

Nicole Lefore visiting innovating farmers in Ghana. Photo via Nicole Lefore.

Irrigation allows farmers to break new ground in cocoa production

When launching our partnership with PEG Africa, we had expected that most farmers would be interested in using the solar-powered pumps for horticulture. Surprisingly, we have found that some farmers are diversifying far beyond this area, including using pumps for other purposes than irrigation and even breaking new ground by introducing irrigation in cocoa cultivation.

Cocoa is central to Ghana’s economy, engaging around 600,000 farmers directly. However, aging farms and climate change are creating challenges. While old trees need to be replaced, around 40 percent of the seedlings die due to lack of rainfall. Low rainfall is also reducing production across all three cocoa-producing seasons.

At the same time, farm income from cocoa remains extremely low, making it difficult for farmers to replant farms and adapt to the changing climate conditions. In short, changing rainfall patterns are making irrigation an urgently needed investment.

When visiting farmers near Offinso recently, I was happy to see that several of them are using their new solar-powered pumps to rehabilitate their cocoa farms. The pumps allow them to regularly water their cocoa seedlings to prevent loss and to inter-crop vegetables and staples such as plantain, while the newly planted seedlings come into production.

One cocoa farmer said that he had previously walked five kilometers to reach a stream for water, but now the solar-powered pump is near his house, enabling easy access to water for multiple uses and cutting down on labor. Another smallholder cocoa farmer told me that he is using the pump to expand into ginger and turmeric production.

A cocoa seedling benefits from irrigation. Photo: Nicole Lefore.
A farmer has diversified, using the pump for catfish production. Photo: Nicole Lefore.

Learning from these farmers will help inform the work we are doing with PEG Africa – and in collaboration with one of Ghana’s largest cocoa-buying companies – allowing us to better understand how to make solar irrigation accessible for cocoa farmers to adapt to climate change and remain viable.

The way the farmers in Offinso have begun to innovate and diversify their production can be expected to enable them to continue cocoa production through farm rehabilitation, while also producing horticulture and specialty produce for increased income. These farmers could be providing one of the first clues that smallholders really can afford solar-powered irrigation, adapt to climate change, and still be profitable.

New technologies, better business ventures

Another small farm business I visited in the Eastern Region, the Growing Gold Farm, is combining solar-powered pumps with other technologies and online platforms to maximize profit, allowing them to continue to reinvest in climate adaptation and environmental health.

The Growing Gold Farm replaced hand watering vegetables and fruit on their two-acre farm with a solar-powered pump purchased from PEG Africa. The farm manager emphasized to me the cost savings made possible now that they no longer need to hire people to irrigate by hand and instead engage that labor for improved agronomy.

The farm increased its profitability and then reinvested in regenerative agriculture practices, including mulching and integrated pest management, as well as water management technologies, such as drip tubes.

The Growing Gold Farm manager explains the savings made possible by investing in solar-powered pumps. Photo: Nicole Lefore.

The farm records the amount of water used on different crops and observes the productivity and quality changes, using tools provided by another ILSSI partner, the International Water Management Institute.

One of the reasons for the profitability of the farm is that it sells produce directly to customers in the Greater Accra market, using Instagram for marketing and orders, and then delivers produce by Uber, both of which have helped to ensure better prices for their high-value produce. They have gained a following by ‘foodies’ in urban markets looking for high-quality, fresh produce, which has generated more social media attention.

The lesson here is that using multiple technologies and turning to online platforms and social media for direct marketing does have promise in emerging markets where urban households are getting further and further away from the farm. When we see a smallholder farmer jumping over the middleman, finding new marketing approaches, profits increase and enable investments in new technologies.

These two examples, the smallholders irrigating cocoa farms and the Growing Gold Farm, both show that smallholder farmers can successfully invest in solar irrigation – utilizing asset-based financing – and expand their benefits and returns through diversifying what they produce and how they engage the market.

We can learn from such cases, which help us better understand how farmers can afford to invest in irrigation through credit and through better linkages within different irrigated produce supply chains. For me, it was a reminder that farmers – including those on very small plots – are the ones who are willing to innovate, take risks, and experiment. Looking to farmers’ innovations will help us and our private sector partners devise better solutions for expanding small scale irrigation in Ghana and beyond.

Making irrigation financing solutions work for everyone: Cultivating Equality 2021 conference contribution

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Making financing tools and solutions more inclusive can provide women farmers with equitable opportunities for accessing irrigation equipment and succeeding in agripreneurship.

At Cultivating Equality: Advancing Gender Research in Agriculture and Food Systems, a virtual conference that focused on the role gender research can play to overcome marginalization and social exclusion, Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) Director Nicole Lefore presented recent research on gender biases in asset-based financing tools used in the small scale irrigation sector.

It is well established that women farmers face higher socio-cultural barriers and credit constraints than men, preventing them from investing in productive irrigation assets and realizing their entrepreneurial aspirations. ILSSI is supporting efforts to overcome such barriers by co-developing new, gender-responsive financing tools with private sector solar irrigation companies.

In general, solar irrigation pump companies in sub-Saharan Africa are attempting to fill a credit gap through asset-based financing, which can enable people ‘at the bottom of the pyramid’, including women farmers, to overcome credit barriers. However, companies’ credit risk assessment tools are not designed to be gender sensitive, and companies do not even target women farmers as potential clients.

How to reach women farmers

In recent research, combining a literature review, tool analysis and action research, Lefore and colleagues investigated whether asset-based financing tools and solutions can be made more inclusive and thereby increase women’s access to productive assets. Interim findings have revealed that even non-asset-based financing products do not necessarily overcome the main constraints limiting women’s access to credit for assets, and financial instruments using new approaches may still be unresponsive to women farmers and value chain actors.

Instead, the preliminary findings indicate that knowledge sharing through multi-stakeholder dialogues can raise awareness about women farmers as a market segment and that reaching women farmer clients requires a targeted marketing and finance approach. The research also revealed that some innovative companies are adapting their marketing and financial tools to expand their client base to include women farmers.

A pathway toward women’s empowerment

This could be good news for women farmers in that other research presented at Cultivating Equality contributed to establishing a link between small scale irrigation and women’s empowerment.

In Small-Scale Irrigation (SSI) and Women’s Empowerment (WE): Lessons from Northern Ghana, Elizabeth Bryan of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and her co-authors indicate that small scale irrigation has benefits for women, but it is not always the most desirable pathway to women’s empowerment. However, asset ownership – along with control over income and production decisions – do seem to contribute to women’s empowerment.

Still, achieving asset ownership remains a stumbling block. Despite the link between asset ownership and empowerment, as Bryan and co-authors point out, women face considerable resource constraints, such as lack of secure land use rights and access to labor, that further reduce their ability to get credit, and therefore interventions that strengthen women’s opportunities are needed to break the multiple and reinforcing boundaries to asset ownership. These insights help inform ILSSI’s continued work with the private sector to target women through gender-responsive asset-based financing tools.

Texas A&M University System Member