The ManicaPost
Samuel Kadungure: Farming Reporter
FARMERS at five of the 10 irrigation schemes funded under the Food and Agriculture Organisation Smallholder Irrigation Support Programme are undergoing training on equipment operation and maintenance and budgeting.Farmers at Gudyanga, Tonhorai, Maunganidze, Musikavanhu A4 and Musikavanhu B2, whose rehabilitation were completed around August 2016, are being trained by the Department of Irrigation and FAO to use the equipment sustainably and be in a position to replace it after its life span.
Work at the other five — Mutema, Gwerudza Block B and A, Chiduku-Ngove and Chiduku-Tikwiri — is expected to be complete by month-end. Training is targeted at key stakeholders, farmers and irrigation management committees so that they are able to manage their schemes viably.
This is being done through improvement of irrigation infrastructure, approaching irrigation farming as a business and strengthening community-level irrigation management committees.
The revamping of schemes and training of farmers on proper management, marketing of their produce and value addition will help eradicate challenges facing most irrigation schemes in Manicaland.
Rehabilitation and expansion of the schemes will help the province improve food and nutritional security at household level. It fits squarely in Government’s thrust, as enshrined in its economic blueprint — Zim-Asset — to achieve food security and surplus to feed downstream industries.
“The five have been successfully rehabilitated and focus is now on training farmers on the operation and maintenance of the equipment. We have noted that most pioneer farmers are either dead or incapacitated, leaving the second generation of farmers in charge of the schemes, and as such we have to train them so that they can use the equipment sustainably,” said a source in the agriculture ministry who refused to be named citing protocol.
The trainers noted that farmers were improperly crafting their budgets by factoring operational costs while excluding maintenance costs — and the training is addressing that knowledge gap by clearly outlining the disparity between the two.
It is hoped that after training farmers engage in sustainable production and make savings enough to replace the equipment at the end of its life span.
The five smallholder irrigation schemes have over the years been performing poorly as a result of technical and financial problems that include blocked canals, erratic power supply, operational bottlenecks such as constant break down of irrigation equipment and infrastructure, gullies and soil erosion, as most of them had no conservation measures as a result of past floods.The FAO project — being spearheaded in Manicaland and Matabeleland — was funded to the tune of six million Euros by European Union. Manicaland received 3 million Euros for the 10 schemes, spread for over five years. The project has two components — irrigation infrastructure rehabilitation and capacity building, market linkages and agro processing/value addition and beneficiation.
The schemes vary in sizes, but add up to 600 hectares cumulatively, and with positive impact on 15 000 beneficiaries in the respective districts.
The project is concentrated in areas that have been found to be too dry for successful crop production without irrigation and those susceptible to periodic seasonal droughts, prolonged mid-season dry spells and unreliable starts of the rainy season.
Zimbabwe has capacity to irrigate 2 244 800 hectares. Despite the existing enormous irrigation development potential in the country, only about 206 000ha is equipped, of which 150 000ha is currently under irrigation.
About 154 500ha fall under the commercial subsector, while 51 500ha fall under the communal subsector. The communal irrigation sector with a total equipped area of approximately 10 000ha is the most affected and vulnerable having less than 65 percent of the schemes fully functional.
Zimbabwe is working hand-in-glove with irrigation experts from Israel, Brazil, India, China, Austria, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Belarus, Egypt, Iran and Italy.
