Innovation Lab For Small Scale Irrigation
The Africa Water and Sanitation Week (AWSW), on 22-26 November, was convened by the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) in conjunction with the African Union Commission and organized with other development partners.
ILSSI partners presented a session on strengthening groundwater governance through social learning – view the full session below.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Fati Aziz currently works as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Texas A&M University in College Station, USA. She completed a PhD in Climate Change and Water Resources in November 2017 at the University of Abomey-Calavi in Benin, based on modeling work completed under the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI). The PhD was sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research through the West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land use (WASCAL).
In June 2015, during my PhD, I joined the Integrated Decision Support System (IDSS) team at the Texas A&M University as a visiting scientist for five months. I received training in the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) tool, which can be used to simulate the quality and quantity of surface and groundwater and to predict the environmental impact of land use, land management practices, and climate change.
Then, in February 2016, I participated in an IDSS training organized by ILSSI in Accra, Ghana, and that’s when I finished the calibration and validation of the SWAT model for river discharge and sediment loads in the Black Volta River Basin.
The Black Volta River Basin is the biggest sub-basin of the Volta River Basin, and it is shared by Burkina Faso, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mali. Although its waters support significant economic activities, such as agriculture and energy production, the availability and use of water is threatened by population growth, changes in land use and land cover, and climate change.
Because I wanted to study the impact of climate change, land use and land cover change on the flow and sediment yield of the Black Volta, calibrating and validating the model was a critical step in my research. Proper model calibration and validation reduces errors in simulations and increases users’ confidence in the tool’s ability to make future projections.
When reviewing how well the SWAT model performed in terms of simulating the historical flow and sediment yield of the Black Volta, based on quantitative statistics during monthly calibration and validation, I found that the model simulated the two variables well during most of the calibration and validation periods.
Finally, when using the calibrated and validated model for projections, I found that all the model scenarios I used projected an increase in flow and sediment yield in the basin during the late (2051–2075) and end of the 21st century (2076–2100) periods, relative to the historical period (1981–2010). This was true for both seasonal and annual projections.
For example, the end-of-the-century projections under the RCP 8.5 scenario (the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 scenario, which represents one of several greenhouse gas concentration trajectories) showed an increase in flow ranging between +69% and +243% across models. The sediment load increase ranged between +358% and +412%. An increase in streamflow may result in floods in the basin region, while higher sediment load may increase the turbidity of the river and cause loss of reservoir storage. Since most of the population in the basin depend on agriculture for their livelihood, measures to cope with increasing floods and droughts, such as enlarging existing reservoirs to take up extra water for storage and for irrigation purposes, should be explored and developed well ahead of time.
Given the rapid increase in global population, urbanization, and climate change, among other challenges, optimum management of natural resources presents one of the most critical challenges of our time. Wanting to contribute to better and sustainable water resource management policies, which are based on sound scientific evidence, made me focus on this field.
My experience in this field is mostly positive. The male-dominated nature of the field is a great source of inspiration to me as it pushes me to work harder. Fortunately, my male colleagues are very receptive and respect my perspectives. Currently, as the only woman in my IDSS research group at Texas A&M University, I receive enormous support and encouragement from my male colleagues.
My dear woman, if scientific modeling is something you’re interested in, I strongly encourage you to go for it. Trust me, there’s real joy in “breaking boundaries” doing what you love.
I am currently assessing land suitability for cocoa cultivation in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire using a multi-criteria evaluation technique based on geographical information systems (GIS). My study is part of a bigger research effort that aims to assess the use of supplemental irrigation to improve the production of cocoa and other cash crops in West African countries. My findings may assist stakeholders in developing better crop management strategies that improve yield and environmental sustainability. We hope that using supplementary irrigation for vegetables and cocoa seedlings will lead to increased food production, household income, and nutrition in the West African region.
Expanding the use of small scale irrigation in Ethiopia can improve farmers’ incomes, nutrition, and livelihoods, but sustainable growth hinges on careful governance of groundwater.
In Ethiopia, scientists with the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) are launching fieldwork to engage farming communities in experiential learning processes to improve groundwater governance. This happens as small scale irrigation becomes increasingly popular and pressure on groundwater resources mounts. The approach, described as behavioral games, allows communities to experiment with possible future realities, strengthening their shared understanding of groundwater decisions and related consequences.
Water resources in Ethiopia are generally sufficient to sustainably expand irrigation, which could result in improved incomes and livelihoods for millions. But despite ample water resource potential, groundwater recharge might not be sufficient to meet the growing demand for water for irrigation. In the Ethiopian Highlands, for example, water levels in shallow wells fluctuate by 2 to 15 meters as the dry season advances, and most wells can only support irrigation during the first three months of the eight-month-long dry season.
That’s why, first of all, using groundwater in conjunction with surface water, where possible, is a sustainable approach to expanding small scale irrigation. Second, groundwater can be preserved through different tactics, such as by increasing recharge or using conservation agriculture practices that are more water efficient. Strong community governance of groundwater resources is also essential to ensure the best and most fair use of this precious resource.
The behavioral games approach has previously been used in India, Colombia and elsewhere to strengthen community governance of shared resources, including groundwater. Performed as collaborative, facilitated exercises, the games—and subsequent community-wide discussions reflecting on the process—support a community to build a shared understanding of how one farmer’s irrigation choices might limit their neighbor’s access to groundwater later in the season.
This understanding can help curb unintended overexhaustion of shared resources and increase collaboration on groundwater governance. In India, communities who participated in the games were significantly more likely to adopt rules governing groundwater use, compared to the communities that did not participate.
The approach has been adapted to fit the Ethiopian context, as explained by Hagar ElDidi, research analyst at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI):
“We take into account the types of water intensive- and water-saving crops that are common in these areas and consider the shallow groundwater levels in Ethiopia. From initial visits to the communities we had targeted, we found that their wells are usually quite shallow. When the water table falls, farmers dig deeper, but using pumps at this depth becomes too costly and farmers have to resort to using buckets, which is more labor intensive and therefore limits the size of their irrigated area to vegetable gardens only. All of this has implications for how groundwater can best be governed.”
Unlike in for example India, groundwater scarcity is not clearly visible, nor very alarming, in Ethiopia. At least not yet.
“Because small scale irrigation is expanding, now is a good time to increase farmers’ understanding of how they, through collective action, can prevent groundwater depletion in the future,” said ElDidi.
So far, the ILSSI team has carried out a preliminary test of the behavioral games approach in three villages, and the team of local collaborators and facilitators is currently in the field rolling out the games, community discussions, and related surveys in 15 villages around Butajra town and within the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region. Another 15 villages will also be surveyed, although without playing the games, to provide a basis for comparison.
The use of groundwater for irrigation is a recent phenomenon in these areas, but has picked up particularly during the past five years, according to Fekadu Gelaw, assistant professor of Agricultural Economics, Institutional and Behavioral Economics at Haramaya University in Ethiopia, who leads ILSSI’s fieldwork.
“As a result, farmers have not yet faced a dramatic change in the groundwater level. None of the communities we have visited so far have any rules—informal or formal—about groundwater use, well digging, crop choice, investments by outsiders, and so on,” said Gelaw. “For now, the Ethiopian government is also promoting the extensive use of groundwater and even provides free motorized pumps to groups of farmers.”
Reflecting on exchanges with communities in the past weeks, Fekadu Gelaw indicated that before the experimental game was played, the majority of community members perceived that the increased use of groundwater for irrigation will have no effect on the groundwater level. Many even believed that groundwater level is not affected by the number of irrigators, nor by the type of crops grown through irrigation, and almost all community members believed that rules for groundwater use were unnecessary.
“All of this dramatically changes after the game,” noted Fekadu Gelaw. “The game seems to have triggered community members to think about an issue they have never thought of before. After the game, most propose establishing rules on groundwater governance, especially rules to regulate groundwater use by small scale investors that cultivate irrigated crops on land rented from community members.”
The fieldwork, which was permitted by the Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI), is moving ahead in the coming weeks, with the ILSSI team taking all necessary measures to safely conduct the work despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The team supplies the necessary personal protective equipment to all individuals participating in the games, interviews, and discussions, encourages frequent use of hand sanitzer, and observes social distancing measures.
In six months, a round of follow-up visits to the communities is planned to examine to which extent the insights brought about by the games has an effect on groundwater governance over the long term.
For a long time, irrigation in Mali was generally equated with the publicly run Office du Niger that serves nearly 100,000 hectares of irrigated rice production in the central part of the country. However, in recent years, a small scale irrigation sector has been rapidly developing, and now is the time to ensure that small irrigators also get to grow big.
Overall, irrigators in Mali consume more nutrient-rich food groups than farmers relying on rain to water their crops, but how much more depends on various factors such as the type of irrigation technology used, the level of non-farm income, farmers’ literacy level and participation in farmer groups.
Moreover, although small scale irrigation is linked with higher production and income generation, small scale irrigators do not consume as much or as good food as farmers participating in larger irrigation schemes. This is likely due to small scale irrigators’ poorer market access, which means that even though their earnings increase, they have only limited opportunities to sell their own produce and buy what is needed for a more diversified diet.
As small scale irrigation expands in Mali, and across much of sub-Saharan Africa, identifying how more farmers can enjoy more benefits from irrigation is becoming increasingly important. On March 3 and March 10, 2021, the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small-Scale Irrigation (ILSSI), with support from the USAID Bureau of Humanitarian Affairs, therefore held a national and a regional workshop in Bamako and Sikasso, respectively, to identify the best ways to accelerate expansion of small scale irrigation.
Adoption of small scale irrigation, by its nature, is disjointed and involves many different actors: Farmers, the private sector, and the government, who do not all have access to the same information at the same time. This results, for example, in higher costs for farmers wanting access to technology, but also lower equipment sales for the private sector; this asymmetry of information slows down expansion.
Improving information flow and strengthening relationships can help remove some of these barriers. For example, supporting strong but poorly connected actors, such as the private sector, to gain insights into what producer groups and their farmer members are looking for in small scale irrigation technology—as well as what linkages these groups already have with research and suppliers—could help the private sector strengthen its sales of irrigation equipment.
As Abdoul Karim Diamoutene, workshop facilitator, noted summarizing his impressions, “A few participants in the recent national workshop suggested that they knew all possible actors that affect small scale irrigation diffusion in Mali, but at the end of the event they conceded that they were surprised about the diversity of influencers that can make a difference for the diffusion of technology.”
To identify actors that influence the diffusion of technologies and how these stakeholders interact with each other, the workshops used the Net-Map method, a facilitation or interview technique that helps people understand, visualize, discuss, and improve situations in which many different actors influence outcomes. Representatives from government, research, non-governmental organizations, donors, and the private sector participated in the deliberations.
Through the process, the national workshop identified 73 different actors who are linked to the diffusion of small scale irrigation, including a large number of government agencies, credit institutions, farmer associations, research institutions, non-governmental organizations, and donors. These results will be fed into software to create a map of who is driving expansion of small scale irrigation to support analysis of linkages and influence levels. A working paper will also be prepared building on this analysis and will be shared with stakeholders to support their decision-making.
With more knowledge in hand, farmer groups, cooperatives, private sector companies, and other influential actors will be able to identify entry points to intervene, remove blockages, and support important relationships, ultimately enabling the diffusion of affordable, good-quality technologies to farmers.
