"We were amazed at the scale of what is going on," said IWMI's Meredith Giordano, who coordinated the initiative. "Despite constraints, such as high upfront costs and poorly developed supply chains, small-scale farmers across Africa and Asia have moved ahead using their own resources to finance and install irrigation technologies. It's clear that farmers themselves are driving this trend."
In Ghana, for instance, small private irrigation schemes already employ 45 times more individuals and cover 25 times more land than public irrigation schemes. The majority of farmers, who said they presently use buckets or rely on rain-fed cultivation, expressed the strong desire to buy a motorized pump, but lacked resources, knowledge or access to suppliers to do so.
Partners in the AgWater collaboration believe the implications of the work could be profound, especially for donors and private investors committed to boosting incomes and livelihoods in the world's poorest countries by improving farmer access to water resources.
The researcha collaborative effort involving several international and national partners and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundationprovides the best evidence to-date on the scale and potential economic benefits of smallholder water management in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Water is a major constraint on food production for millions of smallholder farmers. While water resources are often sufficient, farmers lack the means to harvest it, which limits crop production to the rainy season and diminishes income opportunities.
Of sub-Saharan Africa's abundant renewable water resources, the UN Food and Agriculture Organizatio
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| Contact: James Clarke
j.clarke@cgiar.org 94-773-369-533 Michelle Geis
Burness Communications |