Nobody can believe in the universe if one is heard of saying that a mother of Abbay, Baro-Akobo, Omo-Ghibie, Awash, Genale Dawa, Wabi Sheblie and other potential sources of glorious assets has long been aid dependent as it has been failing to be food self-sufficient. Who is going to blame? Which one is the reason, our poorworking culture, the feeble and unworkable government policy or the inconveniency of the rivers to be irrigated or what else?
Cognizant of the fact that sorting out the challenges of irrigation development in Ethiopia and acknowledging the viable potential and contribution of rivers to the national economy, The Ethiopian Herald approached Molla Misganaw, an agro-economist graduated from Arba-Minch University to have professional point of view.
He said, “Only a few portion of irrigation potential has been developed so far in Ethiopia although the country is considered as a water tower of Africa. Yes, it is believed that irrigation can increase security of crop production and income earning. Simultaneously, irrigation has started uplifting the food security of many smallholder farmers in many parts of the country.”
However, there are several challenges on the performance of irrigation schemes as many witnessed, among others poor scheme management, financial shortage, insufficient technical skill, lack of awareness about the use of irrigation, environmental and social impacts, institutional defies. These are also highly attributable to the low level of irrigation usage, even its absence, and are the key challenges impeding the success of irrigation development. Due to these hurdles most of the schemes are not performing at the best of their capacity, Molla said.
As to him, local resources and adequate catchment management, soil and water conservation using physical and biological measures is essential. True, poor irrigation management is highly related to lack of sufficient skills. Thus, expansion of training for farmers and water user associations by governmental and nongovernmental organizations will have a significant impact on irrigation development. Hence, better water management practices have to be applied.
No doubt, agriculture is a mainstay of Ethiopian economy and the country is endowed with ample water resources with 12 river basins. As a result of this, Ethiopia is considered to be the water tower of Africa. Hence, there is no consistent and reliable inventory and well-studied and documented with regards to water and irrigations related potentials in the Ethiopian context.
“Irrigation use in Ethiopia dates back several centuries, and continues to be an integral part of Ethiopian agriculture, and irrigation development is a priority for agricultural transformation, but poor practices of irrigation management discourage efforts to improve livelihoods, and expose people and the environment to risks. This bottleneck has to be well addressed as promptly as possible to help Ethiopia declare food self-sufficiency,” he underlined.
Moreover, he said the poor performance of irrigation in the country, systematic and holistic evaluation of irrigation management in general and of small-scale irrigation in particular has to be well consolidated.
In most parts of Ethiopia, production from rain-fed agriculture has been highly fluctuating, corresponding to the amount and distribution of rainfall. When there is too little rainfall with uneven distribution, crop failure is unavoidable. In spite of all this, agricultural growth still contributes to the improvement of food security conditions and household empowerment in the country. However, as it now stands, droughts occur far too often and food security in all its extent could not be sustained. Irrigation would have to be introduced in a significant way for a sustainable attainment of food security and rural transformation at the national level.
According to Molla, irrigation can be defined as an artificial application of water to soil for the purpose of supplying the moisture essential in the plant root-zone to prevent stress that may cause reduced yield and poor quality of crop harvest. This is an intentional action made by human to apply water for growing crops, especially during dry seasons where there is a shortage of rainfall.
“Irrigation in Ethiopia is considered as a basic strategy to alleviate poverty and hence food security. It is useful to transform the rain-fed agricultural system which depends on rainfall into the combined rain-fed and irrigation agricultural system. This is believed to be the most prominent way of sustainable development in the country. Therefore, Ethiopia has to well exploit all potentials of its rivers synchronizing government, partners and the farming community efforts in a well-organized manner,” Molla remarked.
Hailu Senbeta is an agro-economist and shared Molla’s ideas. As to him, Ethiopia is a rich country in having considerable water resource potential. However, the level of development of the sector is very low despite the country›s considerable endeavors to promote development of the sector. Even though there are a number of components of water resource development, irrigation is presently one of the priorities of the Ethiopian Government as can be seen from the resources budgeted for irrigation development.
Irrigation development is a key for sustainable and reliable agricultural development, which leads to overall development in Ethiopia. Irrigated agriculture is being practiced under smallholders, medium and large-scale farming, he said.
According to him, The country is not in a position to well provide its population with food to feed a large and growing population, industrial raw materials, improve business climate in the country though it possesses enormous untapped irrigation potential. Domestic and foreign investors are provided with incentives to help Ethiopia well buttress the effort of food self-sufficiency.
Hailu further elucidated that the key constraints for proper irrigation management are among others, lack of information on potentials of different areas for the development of water resources, poor technology choice, conflicts in water use and use rights, dependency syndrome, institutional arrangements and instability, lack of training to handle technologies and poor linkage between research and extension in the area of irrigation water management. These are the major gaps that need to be well addressed to come up with better yield and help the nation reap what it deserves.
As to him, there is a Water Sector Strategy in the nation targeting at translating the Policy with a view to improving the living standard and general socio- economic well-being of the Ethiopians, realizing food self-sufficiency and food security, generating additional hydro-power and enhancing the contribution of water resources in attaining national development priorities.
As far as smallholders are concerned, he said, the major problem of irrigator households is increment of input costs such as pesticides, insecticides and fertilizes. The use of inputs influences household income from crop production. The input cost increments and unavailability of the inputs when required by the farmers are also the main problems. The poor roads and the remote location severely restrict the flow of goods in and out. So the farmers suffered from different challenges including transportation, distance from the market, low bargaining power, and low prices of agricultural inputs.
As to Hailu, in order to mitigate such factors mobilization of local resources and adequate catchment management, soil and water conservation using physical and biological measures is essential. “Poor irrigation management is highly related to lack of sufficient skills. Thus, expansion of training for farmers and water user associations by governmental and nongovernmental organizations will have a significant impact on irrigation development. There is a strong need to improve access to market information to irrigators in order to improve the system in general and an effective extension system should be in place to guide farmers to manage traditional irrigation efficiently,” he added.
Since population growth and increasing food demand coupled with frequent droughts and famine have brought Ethiopia›s agricultural growth to a tough junction, the country has to be in a position to well harmonize its rivers irrigation potential and see off poverty from which its citizens are being suffering, Hailu underlined.
It is well known that he stated that some of the river basins of Ethiopia have untapped potential for irrigation and hydropower development. Numerous models and studies have suggested various irrigation schemes but have failed to precisely identify the irrigation potential or the cropping patterns and water withdrawal requirements of the basin.
He said, “Investing in irrigation could provide a solution to meet the growing demands for food and development in Ethiopia. Especially these days, the country has to capitalize on import substitution and export augmentation because of two pertinent reasons. The country is passing through a number of trying passages on one hand and it must pull itself out of the grip of dependency syndrome in whatever aspects, especially by declaring food self-sufficiency on the other.”
According to Hailu, currently, irrigation is becoming the main water user during the dry season since most water for irrigation is abstracted directly from rivers, streams, and springs. Monitoring irrigation water use from surface and groundwater is important in order to manage water resources properly and avoid water scarcity and associated steeplechases.
In a nutshell, Ethiopia has to well tap the bounties of its rivers by effectively utilizing their irrigation potential in a well-organized fashion avoiding all the aforesaid problems no matter how their source as it is shame on the country to host hunger having a number of rivers.
BY MENGESHA AMARE
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD WEDNESDAY 16 MARCH 2022
