MALNUTRITION: EGYPT: Desertification threat to local food production

CAIRO, 11 July 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Amr Emam/IRIN
Water shortages sparked off protests in Minya Governorate last year, as farmers demanded water for their crops. (file photo)

 Only about 3 percent of Egypt’s land area is cultivated but desertification, and construction work fuelled by economic activity and a rapidly growing population, are eating into this resource, posing a significant threat to domestic food production, according to experts.
“Desertification is the real danger everybody should pay attention to,” Abdel Rahman Attia, a professor of agriculture at Cairo University, told IRIN. “This problem is manifesting itself in a huge food gap [which] will widen even more in the future as we lose more agricultural land to desertification.”
Egypt loses an estimated 11,736 hectares of agricultural land every year, making the nation’s 3.1 million hectares of agricultural land prone "to total destruction in the foreseeable future", he said.
The country imports more than 60 percent of its food, and about 768,903 hectares of agricultural land in the north Delta region has been lost to rising ground water, poor drainage practices and encroaching sand dunes over the decades, he added.
Rising sea levels also pose a threat to agricultural land, causing intrusion of seawater into groundwater, and reducing agricultural productivity.
Thousands of acres of agricultural land have also been lost to construction. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, 165,000 cases of building on agricultural land were recorded between February and June 2011.
“This is disastrous,” said Salah Youssef, head of agricultural services at the ministry.
Ismail Abdel Galil, the former chairman of Egypt’s Desert Research Centre, said studies showed that just over a hectare of fertile land in the Nile Valley is lost every hour because of construction on agricultural land.
In a paper he warned that this trend would continue as long as there was a “business as usual” attitude.

UN convention
Egypt signed the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in 1994, subsequently banning the use of top soil as a raw material for red bricks, taking measures to restrict urban development on arable land, and regulating irrigation systems.
But despite this, the combination of dwindling farmland and a rapidly increasing population - expected to reach 123 million in 2029, from 85 million at present - will make it harder for Egypt to meet its food needs, Attia said.
Increasing desertification has also affected water availability. Egypt’s 55.5 billion cubic metre share of Nile water is already insufficient to satisfy the country’s growing needs, according to Egyptian officials.
For example, to irrigate all its 3.1 million hectares of agricultural land, Egypt needs 10-15 billion cubic metres more Nile water, said Maghawri Shehata, a leading water expert.
“Water has already stopped reaching some fields in the northern and middle parts of the Nile Delta. This makes our country lose even more land to desertification.”
Agriculture is responsible for 85 percent of water consumption in Egypt, according to the country’s state of the environment report. Egypt’s water problems are expected to get worse as upstream countries like Ethiopia and Uganda, which also have rapidly growing populations, push for a greater share of the water to satisfy their own needs.
In 2010, six upstream Nile countries met in Uganda and signed a new water-sharing agreement. Egypt and Sudan did not sign, and have called instead for fresh talks involving all riparian states.

Climate change
Environmentalists warn that climate change will further complicate the situation.
“It is difficult to assess the full destruction [that] climate changes cause to agriculture in this country,” said Emad Farid, a leading environmentalist. “Increased temperatures and the severity of heat and cold waves cause rainfall fluctuations. These fluctuations lead to desertification at the end of the day…
“Some action must be taken to compensate for the loss of agricultural space by reclaiming the desert hinterland of villages in the Delta and the other areas. We should not stand passively by and watch our agricultural land destroyed acre by acre.”
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93193

POVERTY: EGYPT: Sewage-fed vegetable plots pose health risk

23 June 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Sarah Kamshoshy/IRIN
Because of water scarcity, many farmers in Egypt are now siphoning untreated sewage onto their farms to keep their crops growing (file photo)SHARQIA,

 Faced with a shortage of water for irrigation, Ahmed Osman, a farmer in his late thirties, opted to divert local sewage water to irrigate his two-hectare vegetable plot in the heart of Egypt’s Nile Delta governorate of Sharkia.
“Without water, any water, our plants will die, and we will go begging,” he said. “There can be no agriculture without water.”
He is not alone. Other farmers in his village, Kafr Saqr, are doing the same.
“Villagers around this country have to use untreated sewage to irrigate their land because Nile water is becoming so scarce; the nation’s sewage treatment plants do not function properly, and irrigation canals are not dug everywhere,” said Maghawri Shehata, a leading water expert and former president of Monofiya University. “Egypt needs to take action to stop this or it will be in for major catastrophes in the future.”
Given its rapidly rising population, Egypt is fast becoming water poor, and this is taking its toll on agriculture. As a result more and more farmers are now using pumps to siphon thousands of cubic metres of untreated sewage onto their farms to keep the crops growing.
The sewage-dependent vegetables and fruits end up in markets as far away as Cairo and as near as Kafr Saqr. Health experts say the practice is dangerous.

Health risks
“Untreated sewage is full of harmful matter,” said Mahmud Amr, a toxicology expert. “Using it in irrigating vegetables and fruits could result in serious health hazards.”
A 2009 study of the waterways and canals in the Nile Delta, conducted by the State Ministry for Environmental Affairs, found concentrations of harmful materials in these waterways and canals exceeded permissible limits.
“Organic matter concentration (biochemical oxygen demand) exceeded the permissible limit (6mg/l) at all canals,” said the report, which was included in Egypt’s 2009 State of the Environment Report.
The study found that average ammonia concentrations at most monitoring points in Delta canals exceeded permissible limits. It also found an E. coli bacterial count exceeding safe limits (1,000 cells per 100 ml) as prescribed by the World Health Organization.
According to medical experts, there could be a link between the rise in the number of kidney failure, liver cancer and respiratory disease cases in Egypt and the use of unclean water for irrigating vegetable and fruit farms.
In 2009, a report presented to the Egyptian parliament warned against irrigating plants with untreated sewage.
Sewage can be adapted for agricultural use if properly treated, said Khalid Al Qadi, an environmental expert and professor at Helwan University . “The problem is that sewage treatment in this regard is very costly.”
Osman, meanwhile, dismisses talk of the danger of using untreated sewage: “Some people like to talk only. What else can people like me do while clean water is a dream?”

Sharing the Nile
The River Nile is the world’s longest river and serves nine African countries.
Over the years, Egypt’s allotted share of 55.5 billion cubic metres has proven insufficient to meet the needs of a growing population now numbering about 85 million - three times more than it was when Egypt and Sudan signed an agreement on sharing the Nile’s water in 1959. Currently, agriculture is responsible for 70 percent of water consumption in the country.
“There is a clear water deficit of between 10 and 15 billion cubic metres here,” said water expert Shehata. “This shortage is expected to grow even more in line with population growth.”
A symptom of water’s political significance was seen with the July 2010 protest by 600 people from the southern governorate of Minya, who came to the Irrigation Ministry in Cairo to display their anger at the lack of it.
The problem is likely to get worse because upstream Nile Basin countries like Ethiopia and Uganda, which also have rapidly growing populations are pushing for a greater share of the water to satisfy their own needs.
In 2010, six upstream countries met in Uganda and signed a new water-sharing agreement. Egypt and Sudan did not sign, and called instead for fresh talks involving all riparian states. In the last few months, the new Egyptian government has sent emissaries to various Nile Basin countries to pursue the issue.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93045

POVERTY: Malawi: Subsidies not the only answer for farmers

EKWENDENI, 19 April 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: IITA
Farming subsidies have improved food security in the short-term

 It is almost harvest time in Mzimba district, northern Malawi, but Saliet Nyasulu's maize crop looks dry and stunted and it will be hard to feed herself and her three children this year. "[The maize] won't last until next harvest," she told IRIN. "I'll have to do piece-work and grow some vegetables by the river."
Nyasulu was among the 1.6 million smallholder farmers who received government coupons to buy maize seed and fertilizer for the 2010/11 farming season at a tenth of what they would normally cost.
"The soil is good only if you use fertilizer," she said, but the two 50kg bags of subsidized fertilizer allotted per household were not nearly enough to get a healthy crop of maize from her one hectare of land, especially after a dry start to the year. "I had to use less than recommended."
The government's farm input subsidy programme was first implemented in 2005 after several years of drought and chronic food shortages left nearly a quarter of the population in need of food aid.
Most small-scale farmers, who account for about 80 percent of the country's agricultural production, grow maize, Malawi's main staple crop. President Bingu wa Mutharika hoped to avoid the need for future food handouts by distributing coupons for maize seed and fertilizer to the poorest 50 percent of farmers.
The government has since credited the programme with several years of bumper maize harvests that have given the country a surplus and contributed to strong economic growth. There is little doubt that the subsidies have greatly improved food security and helped reduce the number of Malawians living below the poverty line from 60 percent in 2004 to less than 45 percent in 2009.
However, a number of smallholder farmers IRIN spoke to in Mzimba district said they either did not qualify for the programme, or did not receive enough subsidized fertilizer to make a significant difference to their yields. Several said they received only one 50kg bag this year and had to share it with a neighbour.
As the programme goes into its sixth year, there are also growing concerns about long-term sustainability and the extent to which it has diverted attention and resources from other initiatives that could help farmers like Nyasulu.
"It has really taken people out of hunger," said Elizabeth Sibale, a consultant at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Malawi, "but it's not a lasting solution."

A costly "band aid"?
The cost of fertilizer and transporting it to farmers all over the country has risen steeply in recent years and by 2008/09 the programme was draining 16 percent of the national budget and nearly 7 percent of GDP.
The government has scaled down the programme in the last two years, but it still cost 23 billion kwacha (US$152.3 million) in 2010/11, according to the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), which is providing 5 percent of funding. In total, about 10 percent of the programme is donor funded.
"Other programmes are not getting as much attention and funding," Sibale told IRIN. "We're forgetting all the other problems that affect farmers and putting a band aid on them."

 Photo: Kristy Siegfried/IRIN
Saliet Nyasula did not receive enough subsidized fertilizer to grow a healthy crop of maize

One of the main problems faced by farmers in Malawi is an increasingly unpredictable climate. Lake Malawi, several other lakes and hundreds of rivers cover a fifth of the country, but only 3 percent of land is irrigated. Most smallholder farmers depend on a good rainy season for their one harvest of the year.
"If the rains are good, I get a good crop," said another farmer in Mzimba district. "If the rains are not good, then it's a disaster."
Sibale said the government had made some efforts to expand irrigation in the last five years by distributing treadle pumps to farmers. However, the Green Belt Initiative, an ambitious plan to irrigate one million hectares along the Shire River in the south of the country has yet to be implemented.
There are other problems too. When Malawi was less densely populated, farmers could leave a field fallow for a year so the soil could recover. But with increasing pressure on land and easier access to fertilizers, “People have completely forgotten how to keep soil healthy," said Sibale. "Now it's so degraded, they have to use more fertilizer every year."
She added that many officials in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food security shared her concerns about soil health.

Looking for alternatives
Victor Mhoni of the Civil Society Agriculture Network (CISANET), a local NGO, said long-term fertilizer use actually contributed to soil degradation by making it dry and acidic unless combined with measures that can restore fertility such as planting nitrogen-fixing trees or growing legume crops.
Programmes promoting agroforestry and growing legumes have already shown impressive results, and farmers eventually need much smaller quantities of fertilizer to produce good yields.
In the last five years, the World Agroforestry Centre, in partnership with government and NGOs, has reached nearly 200,000 farmers with tree seeds and training on how to grow nitrogen-fixing trees, as well as fruit trees and fast-growing trees for firewood.
Mesha Khongolo planted gliricidia, a type of nitrogen-fixing tree, using seed he was given by the Ministry of Agriculture's local Extension Development office. He estimated that incorporating the leaves and branches into his soil had increased his yields by more than 50 percent.
Nyasulu tried planting some tree seeds but they failed to germinate and she is now growing pigeon pea, a tall, leafy legume with a similar effect but quicker results. By 2012 she should see an improvement in her soil and get a healthier crop of maize.

Politically sensitive
DFID's five year commitment to the input subsidy programme ends in June 2011. "We are currently considering options for new support to agriculture in Malawi," wrote Malawi-based Communications Officer Andrew Massa, in an emailed response to questions.
"We believe that Malawi needs a range of programmes that promote economic growth and poverty alleviation," he added.
Attempts to reach the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security for comment on this story failed. Malawi's input subsidy programme has become politically sensitive, and reports of pockets of food insecurity, especially in the south, have been met by angry denials by Mutharika.
"There's been a lot of rhetoric about food security being solved in Malawi with the input subsidy programme and I just don't think that's true," said Rachel Bezner-Kerr, a Canadian researcher who has worked on a project to promote legume inter-cropping in Mzimba district.
"It's a short-term solution, but in the long term you're really not any further ahead after spending millions of dollars if you haven't found alternative solutions to improving soil fertility."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92520

MALNUTRITION: NIGER: Chasing food security

 Photo: Catherine-Lune Grayson/IRIN
illage chief and his sons tend to crops in Niger's Tahoua region (file photo)

NIAMEY, 29 March 2011 (IRIN) - Six months before the start of the 2009 rainy season the government of Niger was warned the rains would fail. In the drought that followed, more than half the population - 7.8 million people - faced food shortages. It was the third food crisis in seven years.
“It is part of my duties, and I gave a list of measures to the government to prepare for the drought, such as planting faster-yielding varieties of millet and sorghum (two of the main staples), but governments do not always listen to us,” said Prof Alhousseini Bretaudeau, executive secretary of the Permanent Interstates Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), a scientific arm of the African Union.
“We have spent 30 years perfecting the science of predicting droughts, and developed tools to help countries prepare but few political leaders pay attention,” Bretaudeau told IRIN at a technical and scientific conference to brainstorm ways of getting the country out of chronic food and nutrition insecurity.
The Conférence Internationale sur la Sécurité Alimentaire et Nutritionnelle au Niger (CISAN) began on 28 March, hosted by a military-backed interim government that will give way to a newly elected civilian administration, headed by Mahamadou Issoufou, on 6 April. To many observers, CISAN represents a long-awaited attempt by Niger to get to grips with the food security issues that have plagued the country for decades.
“Better late than never - the conference was long overdue,” said Jean-Pierre Guengant, director of research at the France-based Institute of Research for Development (IRD), which gave the world Plumpy’nut, a peanut-based therapeutic food, and insecticide-treated mosquito nets.
Niger slipped into chronic food insecurity a long time ago, without any of the former governments noticing, said Guengant, who has spent a decade in the country.
Amongst those who singularly failed to address food issues was Mamadou Tandja, ousted by the military in February 2010. “He did not accept there was a food crisis [in 2010] because he did not trust what the NGOs were telling him - he thought they wanted to make money,” said the man behind the conference, Col Aboulkarim Goukoye, head of the Higher Authority of Food Security (HASA).
“The second reason was that he was a very proud man - he did not want to accept that there was a problem,” said Goukoye, who is also the interim military junta’s spokesperson.
“Under the previous regime words such as ‘food crisis’ and even ‘nutrition’ were taboo - we would have had to pack our bags and leave,” Simone Winneg, coordinator of Humedica, a German medical NGO, commented.
“When we came in power,” Goukoye said, “all the technical people in the agriculture department came to us and said: ’You are probably thinking of security issues, but we have a food crisis.” They turned to the international community for help. Mahamadou Danda, prime minister of the interim government, asked Goukoye to find out how the country could address the recurring food crises. In June 2010 HASA was set up and the idea of developing a food strategy was born. “It naturally led to the idea of a conference where we could consult with technicians and scientists to help develop this strategy,” Goukoye said.

Inclusiveness
Will the incoming regime follow through? Goukoye said he was trying to get at least 10 of the recently elected parliamentarians involved. “Our strategy is not going to be any particular government’s strategy but a Nigerien strategy.” Over the next few days, participants including technical experts from across the world will look at ways to ease access to food, reduce vulnerability and improve governance in food security.
Ibrahim Mayaki, head of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the African Union’s development agency, who served as prime minister of Niger from 1997 to 2000 and was asked to head the conference, said the process was as inclusive as possible, with all previous Nigerien regimes invited to participate.
Governance was a key issue in tackling food insecurity. Local authorities were in the frontline of government service delivery as “the first connection between the government and the people in the rural areas, where most of our people live” and could recognize and the first signs of food insecurity. Mayaki suggested empowering them to address the issue.
Previous regimes had not paid much heed to warnings by technical experts in the country. “This is the first time someone is paying attention,” said Prof Maxime Banoin, an agronomist and head of the scientific and technical committee organizing the conference, who noted that other experts had also presented explanations for why the country was grappling with food insecurity.

So what is wrong with Niger?
The northern two-thirds of Niger, the biggest country in West Africa, is desert, so the entire food requirement depends on the rainy season from May to September to grow crops in the south. “It is a scary thought, and often things go wrong with it [the rainy season],” said Humedica’s Winneg.
 Photo: Catherine-Lune Grayson/IRIN
Two-thirds of Niger is desert

In an analysis prepared for the conference, Banoin and IRD’s Guengant identified the structural causes of the recurring food crises: food production has not kept up with population growth, and rainfall has declined considerably since the 1960s.
“Niger has the world’s highest fertility rate, with an average of seven children per family, so the population has grown at 3.5 percent per year, while food production, at best, has grown at about 2.5 percent per year,” said Guengant. Niger has struggled with a structural deficit for the past 20 years.
Declining rainfall has exacerbated the problem. The areas that grow staples like sorghum and millet, which need a minimum of 400mm of rain per year, has shrunk from 25 percent of the country to 12 percent since the 1960s.
Sorghum yields have dropped from between 600kg and 800kg per hectare in the 1960s to between 200kg and 300kg per hectare, while millet production has remained stagnant at 400kg per hectare.
Besides the shrinking amount of rain, the low production has highlighted the inadequate support given to agriculture, researchers said. “We have to have a multisectoral approach to finding solutions,” Guengant noted.
Investment in biotechnology to improve yields, adequate inputs, agricultural infrastructure such as irrigation systems, and education to empower women in a society that encourages them to have more children, are some of the policy measures the government should take, said Banoin and Guengant.
Harnessing the Niger River system could potentially give Niger 330,000 hectares of irrigated agricultural land.
The country has one of the world’s lowest scores in educating girls,the world’s highest maternal mortality rate, and one of the highest infant mortality rates, which all highlight the low status of women in Niger, and the cause of the high fertility rate.
Only four out of 10 girls are enrolled in primary school, two out of 10 attend secondary school, and only three out of 100 make it into high school, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The social reasons for having large families are deep-seated. “If we have only two children, what if they both die? You need to have at least seven or eight so you still have some children - it is always good to have more children,” said Hadiza Halidou, a woman participating in the conference.
“Women’s education is very important - they are also the main producers of food, which men do not acknowledge,” said NEPAD’s Mayaki.

More money needed
Traditional donors like Europe and the US have been concentrating on their internal financial woes, so African governments had to become more proactive about mobilizing resources to invest in agriculture locally and regionally, Mayaki said.
The technical and scientific conference would be followed by a leaders’ conference, where the new food security strategy would be presented, said HASA’s Goukoye. Regional heads of state, traditional donors, and local and international NGOs would be invited to attend for feedback and investment opportunities.
Mayaki said Africa should consider tapping emerging economies like South Africa, Brazil, China, India and Russia for money. Goukoye commented: “The biggest problem in Africa is implementation and follow-up.”
So what would happen if the new regime did not consider food security a priority and reneged on measures to address it - would the military junta come back?
“Just for that?” Goukoye said. “But I don’t think governments will not act - food security is everyone’s problem now.”

Mothers walking home with supplementary rations for their under-two children in Niger's central region of Tahoua


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POVERTY: Drought threatens hydropower in Vietnam

 Photo: FAO Vietnam
Irrigating these fields may reduce power for country

BANGKOK, 9 March 2011 (IRIN) - Low water levels in reservoirs opened in January to irrigate rice fields in Vietnam are threatening to undermine hydropower-fuelled electricity, warn experts.
Approximately 2.7 billion cubic metres of water, equivalent to 500 million kilowatts of electricity, were discharged to irrigate more than 635,000 hectares of crops, according to Nguyen Tri Ngoc, head of the cultivation department in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
However, increasingly volatile weather patterns, coupled with heightened water demands from households and local industries, have contributed to a drought that could mean cutting off needed energy. Nearly one-third of Vietnam's electricity is derived from hydropower.
"The government will have to ration electricity. They have already increased electricity prices by 15 percent to reduce consumption and save water in hydroelectric dams," said Koos Neefjes, climate change policy adviser for UN Development Programme.
"Given the increase in severity of droughts being experienced in Vietnam, the country's overdependence on hydropower means it can expect to experience more energy blackouts," said Ame Trandems with the US-based NGO International Rivers.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=92148

POVERTY: KENYA: Economics of rice production

3 March 2011 (IRIN)


 Photo: David Hecht/IRIN
Ahero farmers hope to boost their livelihoods by exploiting agronomical practices to improve their yields (file photo)

AHERO,  - After spending Ksh35,000 (US$437) on his 0.4 hectare rice plantation - preparing the land, paying for water, transplanting the rice and hiring casual labour - Vincent Opiyo hopes to make Ksh65,000 ($812) when he sells the rice, which takes about three months to mature.
"I expect to harvest 25 bags [50kg each] from this [land] but I know I could get more if I were to improve the yield," Opiyo, 49, father of eight, told IRIN at the Ahero Rice Irrigation Scheme in Nyanza province.
In addition to the high costs of inputs, the farmers, who are "licensees" on trust land, struggle to access credit as they lack title deeds.
Were it not for what he earns working for the National Irrigation Board (NIB) - which runs the Ahero scheme - Opiyo would not meet the needs of his family from farming.
"Poverty is very high among many farmers under the Ahero scheme because they never make enough to cover needs such as school fees and payment for medicine when children fall sick; look at the structures we live in, most of them are semi-permanent," Opiyo said.
"Many of us do not even own a cow or some goats. Our father managed to [send] us to school from the proceeds of his [1.6ha] of rice, but for us, his children, it is no longer enough."

Low yields, better prospects
According to NIB, the average yield of Basmati rice at Ahero is 13-25 (75kg) bags per 0.4ha when it should be 20-30 bags; while the yield for Sindano rice is 15-30 bags, when it should be more than 30 bags.
At the start of operations in 1969, the Ahero Irrigation Scheme had 519 farmers, each with 1.6ha held on trust by the government. The farmers have since sub-divided their farms among their children but they are not allowed to sub-divide below 0.4ha or sell the land.
In 2009, a farmer-oriented funding arrangement, known as the Revolving Fund, was set up to support the farmers' production and marketing efforts.
Jacob Ongere, a farmer at the Ahero scheme and an extension officer with the Ministry of Agriculture, told IRIN that with the Revolving Fund and the government's Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP), things were now looking up.
"The profit that farmers are making is still way below average but we hope this will change with more funding and support in sectors such as marketing and capacity-building," he said.
Through the Revolving Fund Office, Ongere said, the Ahero farmers hope to boost their livelihoods by "exploiting agronomical practices" to improve their yields - transplanting on time and using pesticides and fungicides.


 Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN : The average yield of Basmati rice at Ahero is 13-25 (75kg) bags per 0.4ha when it should be 20-30 bags

He added: “The situation is so bad right now such that we are in the harvesting season but the majority of farmers with children who sat their primary school examinations last year cannot afford to take their children to secondary boarding schools. The best they can do is send them to day schools because the charges are lower."
He urged the farmers to explore consolidation and adopt a group approach to reap better yields.

Devolving responsibility
Laban Kiplagat, senior NIB manager at Ahero, said NIB encouraged farmers to take greater responsibility of the scheme.
He said NIB was concentrating on its core business: "The NIB's core activities include provision of water and maintenance of irrigation infrastructure as well as management of farmers' organizations," Kiplagat said.
"Therefore, the NIB would be offloading production, marketing and capacity-building so that farmers can manage themselves better."
He said Nyanza had a potential to irrigate up to 200,000ha in its Lake Basin region.
Kiplagat said the farmers should embrace a culture of saving because "they tend to spend all they get from their harvests without proper planning for the high costs of operations - ploughing, water abstraction [pump-fed water supply] and tractors, which are costly to hire; and other inputs such as fertilizer and seed".
Increasing cropping frequency would also help farmers increase their earnings, he said. "Currently many farmers plant the rice crop once a year, meaning the land is in use for only four months and then lies fallow for the other eight months."
Kiplagat said NIB wanted to expand the scheme and to open up more swampy areas for irrigation.
"Under Vision 2030, some 40,000ha is expected to be put under irrigation per year, with the NIB having the responsibility of ensuring 30,000ha goes under irrigation," he said. "We hope to do this by exploring the introduction of more crops, such as seed maize, cotton, as well as horticulture, for irrigation."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=92086

POVERTY: NEPAL: “Dismal” irrigation system worsens crop shortages

  Photo: Suman K. Shakya/ENPHO 
Even in irrigated parts of Nepal's traditionally fertile Terai region, access to water is problematic

KATHMANDU, 7 January 2011 (IRIN) - The government of Nepal needs to improve irrigation management to achieve higher agricultural productivity and overcome “dismal” water and crop shortages, experts say.
Most of the country’s 1.2 million hectares (ha) of irrigated land is in the fertile Terai (southern Nepal) or other easily accessible areas, but very little in the hill regions of the food-insecure far and mid-west.
According to UN World Food Programme (WFP), the 600,000 people living in the far and mid-west regions at the base of the Himalayan mountains - also referred to as the hills - have the most problems growing and accessing enough food to survive.
Food security is increasingly problematic even in the fertile irrigated districts of the Terai, including Saptari and Siraha, where paddy production was reduced by half due to late rains in 2010, according to a yet-to-be-published report by WFP.
Just because there is irrigation does not mean it works, according to FMIS-Promotion Trust, a local NGO that works with centuries-old farmer-managed irrigation systems (FMIS).

Farmer managed irrigation
FMIS mostly uses traditional canals made of wood, boulders, shrubs and logs, whereas government constructed systems are concrete, and include tube wells, shallow wells and groundwater.
Because of neglect and lack of maintenance, only two-thirds of the nation’s entire irrigation network works during the monsoon season and only one third of the land is irrigated year-round.
To adapt to changing rain patterns and longstanding food problems in remote mountainous areas, the government needs to give more support to FMIS, said Pradhan.
“There is clear evidence that there has been higher agricultural productivity through FMIS than the irrigation system managed by the government,” she said.
She explained how, in FMIS, farmers take responsibility for water acquisition, allocation, distribution and overall management on a continuous basis - but lack critical government financial backing, especially to operate in difficult terrain.
So far, 1.2 million ha of the country’s irrigable land has watering systems, out of which FMIS covers 70 percent, with the rest government-managed, according to the Ministry of Irrigation.
Until the 1970s, Nepal was as a food exporting nation, but in the past decade it has become a net food importing country, producing less than 2.5 tons of grain per hectare annually, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.
But the country could boost cereal production six-fold with better irrigation systems, said Pradhan.
Rapid population growth and migration put a squeeze on the region’s food supply. Until the 1970s, two-thirds of the population lived in the hills and one-third in the Terai, but low agricultural productivity in the hill regions encouraged more people to move to the Terai.

Revamp?
Since almost all of the country’s arable land is under cultivation and there have been few technological improvements for Nepal’s rain-fed crops, the best solution is irrigated agriculture, according to the government’s Irrigation Management Division (IRM).
“We cannot say that the poor irrigation system alone is to be blamed for food insecurity but it does play a major role,” Uttam Raj Timilsina, IRM’s deputy director general, told IRIN.
The government is conducting surveys to start inter-basin river projects to boost irrigation management, said Timilsina.
The hope is these projects can transfer water from big rivers (Bheri, Kali, Trishuli, Koshi) to tributaries in the country’s interior to ensure year-round irrigation, working towards a 10-year government strategy of revamping irrigation
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91556