Innovation Lab For Small Scale Irrigation

Innovation Lab For Small Scale Irrigation

News

Water access and nutrition security

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How can reliable water access contribute to nutrition security in Africa south of the Sahara?

The following blog story was written by Laia Domènech, visiting fellow in the Environment and Production Technology Division at IFPRI, in honor of World Water Day 2015. The theme of this year’s event on March 22 is “Water for Sustainable Development.”

A set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are expected to be adopted in September 2015 by the UN General Assembly. In advancing the 2015 Millennium Development Goals, the SDGs call for action from both developing and developed countries to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture (SDG2) as well as promote sustainable water management (SDG6). Although SDG2 and SDG6 are not linked in the current post-2015 development agenda framework, multiple benefits might be achieved and tradeoffs reduced if both water supply and agricultural water are managed in direct support of improved nutrition, particularly in chronically food-insecure countries and in Africa south of the Sahara.

IFPRI Discussion Paper: Is Reliable Water Access the Solution to Undernutrition? 

Globally, an estimated 805 million people are chronically undernourished, many of them in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA), where 329 million also lack access to improved water supply and 640 million do not have access to an improved sanitation facility. The linkages between water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and nutrition have long been recognized. Poor WASH is considered a leading cause of diarrhea, nematode infections, and other conditions such as environmental enteropathy, which is caused by frequent intestinal infections and has received renewed attention in recent years.

Water is also an essential resource for growing food, and water scarcity is a major… Read more here

Study: ‘Garden kits’ could help home gardens provide food security

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Garden kits that pay specific attention to small-scale irrigation might hold the key to stronger food security for smallholder farmers of ILSSI project countries.

Still, a new study recommends an approach to building better home gardens that considers many contributing factors including: building on current farming practices, examining the roles of men, women and children in gardening, calculating current productivity of gardens, examining how produce is used, examining current water management practices and problems and taking into account farmers’ perceptions of their gardens’ viability.       

The study also looks at home garden/irrigation kits that have been used in the past and what aspects of those examples have shown success.

Click to read the full paper here.

ILSSI selects work locations in Ethiopia, other countries to follow

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ETHIOPIA – Four locations across Ethiopia have been selected for employing highly efficient irrigation systems that could translate to big water savings for Ethiopia’s smallholder farmers and eventually for those of Ghana and Tanzania.

“For the farmers of these regions, achieving viability from these technologies would mean resource and cost savings that translate to stronger livelihoods through agriculture,” said Neville Clarke, the project’s leader from Texas A&M.

Robit, Danglia, Adami and Lemo – regions listed respectively from northernmost to southernmost Ethiopia – are first in line to receive water-conserving irrigation technologies that will later be implemented in the two other operating countries of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation.

“These are irrigation technologies that we hope will concurrently benefit the farmers and the environments of these parched regions” Clarke said. “We’re looking at these Ethiopian sites as a case study before spreading the systems around our other two countries.”

Field technology trials will include studies on irrigation pumps, irrigated forages, water application methods and recharge enhancement.

New tech will be scrutinized using the Integrated Decision Support System (IDSS) – a method for assessing the consequences of adopting new technologies and policies. The IDSS identifies constraints that limit technology adoption and proposes solutions. In this case, it will estimate new technology’s effects on many aspects including crop production, the environment and the economy – all the determining factors of improving income and enhancing nutrition for smallholder farmers. These components can be measured using the IDSS at village, watershed and regional levels.

IDSS system training has been ongoing for agriculture practitioners of Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania, preparing them to assess new irrigation technologies.

“We’re very excited to begin looking at how our irrigation interventions work in the field in Ethiopia and how effective they might be in Ghana and Tanzania down the road,” Clarke said.

Training offers bright outlook

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JUNE 2014, ETHIOPIA — Farmers of Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania are a small step closer to boosted income through research after 65 trainees attended a Texas A&M–led training workshop in June on using the Integrated Decision Support System (IDSS.)  

The IDSS is a method for assessing the consequences of adopting new technologies and policies. It identifies constraints that limit adoption and proposes solutions. It estimates effects on many aspects including crop production, the environment and the economy – all the determining factors of improving income and enhancing nutrition for smallholder farmers. These components can be measured using the IDSS at village, watershed and regional levels.   

The workshop objective was to train country analysts on the IDSS to be able to apply it to the irrigation needs and opportunities of smallholders – part of ILSSI’s goal of having smallholder farmers make use of new, practical irrigation systems. 

Workshop participants included 45 mostly Ethiopian students, including seven females; attendees from government, international centers, and the private sector. The first half day of focused on administrators who will use the results of the IDSS; the remainder of the training was aimed at current and future analysts. 

The IDSS system is being used to assess the impact of small scale irrigation innovations for multiple locations in the FtF zones of Ethiopia.  Similar studies will be conducted in Tanzania and Ghana. But the assessment method can also be applied to future studies long after ILSSI has concluded.

One analyst of the Ethiopian Ministry of Environment and Forest, for example, has already persuaded his colleagues to use IDSS in assessing new policies for enhancing sustainable use of natural resources in the country.

The ILSSI “research to action” approach in farmer fields uses precision planning to produce relevant results that enhance adoption of outcomes. Implementation involves high participation among stakeholders at varying levels. National stakeholder meetings in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Ghana for example included farmers, university faculty, government officials, private sector industry and USAID Missions. 

Engagement with same set of stakeholders from farm level upward to regional and national levels uses the IDSS models to scale up and out to identify areas of geographic equivalence at watershed and larger areas where the IDSS might be applied.   

A second round of advanced IDSS training took place February 2015 in Ethiopia and similar workshops will be conducted in Tanzania and Ghana throughout 2015. 

ILSSI moving forward

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In June, the Innovation Laboratory for Small Scale Irrigation, a project under USAID’s Feeding the Future Initiative, hosted a training program in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for over 60 trainees from Ethiopian universities, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, the Ministry of Water, Irrigation, and Energy, and CGIAR staff on the three main models that they will employ over a five-year project. 

These models will be used to help determine the production, economic, human nutrition, and environmental impacts of introducing small-scale irrigation technologies at field, farm and watershed scales in communities in Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania. 

They include:

  1. APEX analyses of impacts on productivity of a particular technological interventions, such as small scale irrigation and associated practices;
  2. SWAT analyzes the environmental impacts of these interventions at the watershed or river basin scale; and
  3. FARMSIM analyzes the farmer’s risks of applying the technology.

The models were originally developed by the US Department of Agriculture and Texas A&M University but are being adapted through the Innovation Laboratory for Small Scale Irrigation for use in Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania, implemented in partnership with CGIAR centers: the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

For the training, IWMI used data collected on stream flow and weather variables over 3 years in Jeldu in Ethiopia’s Southwestern Abay Basin.  This enabled trainees to set up models with real-world data and evaluate their accuracy.

This collaboration between CGIAR Centers and United States universities aims to conduct innovative research under field conditions and to analyze the results in a different way, using powerful models that have been developed over the years and recently validated in studies in Ethiopia over the last two years.  “We believe the combined institutional experience of the team will provide relevant results that can be applied at farm and other levels of scale,” said Neville Clarke of Texas A&M University.

“To ensure that these models are characterized to the best of our abilities, we are in the process of designing field interventions to show research into action,” said Simon Langan, Director of the IWMI East Africa Office.  Through such field interventions, researchers will be able to test if the predictions made by the models are true on the ground as well.

This will give researchers and government decision makers the confidence to use the models to predict the effects of small-scale irrigation in areas where it is not possible to conduct field experiments.

The project aligns closely with the Ministry of Agriculture’s priority to support the development of intensive agricultural systems using small scale irrigation  for high value crops.  With help from the models and field tests in areas like Jeldu, researchers will be able to better determine how to intensify systems, reduce erosion, and increase forage production with small scale irrigation.  Specific technologies that will be tested include:

  1. low cost water lifting devices
  2. watershed management
  3. water harvesting and drip irrigation
  4. irrigated fodder

“We can conduct risk analyses for each of these technologies using data about costs and prices as well as the economic status of the farmer.  We can conduct analyses that say it’s likely that adopting this new technology will improve the economic status of the farmer and reduce risk, or the opposite,” said Allan Jones of Texas A&M University.

But models aren’t the end all, be all.  “Models don’t necessarily give you a definitive answer, especially in the absence of data.  So we use the best data available, coupled with knowledge from local officials and farmers about the local landscape and management practices, and then combine this information in models to offer a series of alternatives and their potential impacts.  But our models don’t guarantee that the impact we predict will actually happen, but instead give an indication of the likely outcomes” said Tracy Baker, Hydrologic modeler and IWMI researcher.

Nevertheless, “this type of information is useful whether you’re a farmer who wants to spend money to buy a pump or if you’re a government official who wants to develop a government program to enhance the acceptance of a technology,” Jones said.  With success, the project has major implications for policy makers and investors.

The project is still in its first year.  Over the next four years, the models will be tested in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Ghana.

Texas A&M University System Member