KARL ANGELO A.

BIAG September 25, 2019

GC51 Water Resources Engineering

Article Title:
“IMPACT OF IRRIGATION SCHEME ON FOOD SECURITY:

by Kakuko Kapkai John

The World concern on access to adequate and nutritional food for a growing population has
triggered the emerging of a number of strategies for different environments and under varied
leaderships, programmers and partnerships. One among many is seeking for ways of increasing
agricultural productivity through irrigated systems, especially under smallholder managed irrigation
schemes that mainly produce food products for direct consumption or trading in the rural spot markets.
On the other hand, large scale irrigation setups, with more sophisticated technologies concentrate on
products for export, processing and/or niche markets. The rising need for irrigation arises from the
apparent inadequacy of soil moisture to support a wide range of crops that are depended upon for food
needs and sometimes incomes. It is a common experience to producers to show interest for irrigation
facilities even in areas where irrigation was not a necessity up to recent years. This scenario is
convincingly experienced as a result of global warming manifesting itself through a number of climatic
change effects. Such effects as erratic torrential rainfall, wide temperature differentials both on land and
water surfaces, speed of wind, unexpected short seasons, increased pests and diseases among others
have been witnessed to be responsible for changes in crop yields, reduced soil fertility and increased
erosion on farm land (FAO, 2000). 2 Human reactions to these effects has been: searching for
technological solutions that can combat the resultant food deficits, change of eating habits, adoption of
new techniques, etc. This is however to be accompanied with appropriate technological packages which
may be affordable or not, less known to the producers or difficult to comply with. Primarily, irrigation
can promote increment of yields of most crops by between 100 and 400 per cent. It is therefore
expected that, over the next 30 years, 70 per cent of the grain production will be generated from
irrigated land in the world. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that irrigated land in
developing countries will increase by 27 per cent in the next 20 years, but the amount of water
expected for agriculture will only increase by a mere 12 per cent if the existing potential for
conservation and storage is not adequately exploited. The potential existing in harvesting runoff water,
conservation of valley bottom reservoirs and lowland bonds has been known to supplement crop water
requirements without installation of complicated equipment or with only modest investments (FAO,
1997). In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 4% of crop land is irrigated compared to 1.8% for Kenya. However,
in many parts of the world, there are large untapped reserves of ground water. In addition, there is great
potential for harvesting runoff water for farming especially in the lowlands and valley-bottoms that
store water naturally. With reasonable investments, this potential could be unleashed for increased food
security in this era of food insecurity and deteriorating natural resources and production conditions as a
result of climatic changes FAO, 2000). 3 The main irrigation schemes in the country are distributed
over various agro ecological zones and regions, giving rise to unique opportunities for diversification,
crop disease and pest control, low product market competition or gluts and less competition for water
resources. According to the World Bank report, 2008, Kenya’s irrigated land as a percentage of
Cropland is quite low and has stagnated at 1.6% since the year 2000 and rising marginally to 1.8% in
2003. The main irrigated crops are rice, maize, sugarcane, vegetables, bananas, citrus, coffee, tea,
cotton and flowers. Some of these crops like maize, sugarcane, coffee, tea and cotton, technically,
require large scales of operation for economic returns to be realized. As the Economic Stimulus
programme (ESP) initiatives are being implemented care will have to be taken to guide the
smallholders on the right crop for prevailing production systems. In this case, the implementation of
ESP should go hand in hand with provision of adequate and focused extension, land use management,
water use efficiency and environmental conservation in order to realize the anticipated results.
Achievement of results normally would be the most reliable way of stimulating growth of irrigation
that seems to be stagnating in Kenya.

Article Title:
“IRRIGATION BY NIGHT IN THE EATERN CAPE, SOUTH AFRICA”

by Bram van der Horst and Paul Hebinck

This paper explores the dynamics of the use of water at village level in the Eastern Cape, South
Africa. It pays specific attention to ‘irrigation by night’ which refers to widespread small-scale,
informal irrigation practices that cannot be easily observed and yet which are subjected to rules and
modalities that control the use of water. Consequently, water meant exclusively for human consumption
is also widely used for watering crops in home gardens and occasionally for cattle. Denison et al.
(2015) conclude that the use of water for productive use dominates current household water-
consumption patterns. There are laws and governance structures in place in South Africa to prevent
such use of water. Despite these, ‘irrigation by night’ is a common practice. The aim of this paper is to
understand why this is so. Exploring and explaining such practices requires situating ‘irrigation by
night’ in a broader historical and contemporary context of development interventions in the domain of
land and water. The central question addressed in this paper is what lessons can be learned from past
and present interventions in the field of water and land in South Africa, and the Eastern Cape in
particular. The reference to the notion ’irrigation by night’ should not be confused with night irrigation
to achieve improved irrigation efficiency to conserve water (less evaporation at night), and to prevent
water-supply shortages during daytime irrigation peaks; typically tail-end users resort to night irrigation
when top-end users are active during the day. We use ‘irrigation by night’ specifically to depict the
practice of people tapping water meant for human consumption at times when the regulatory
institutions are not functional or absent. We adapted the notion ‘irrigation by night’ from the work of
Robert Chambers (1986, 2013). Chambers refers to the informal, invisible operations in irrigation
systems in the night: ‘It is common place that the night is the time for illicit appropriation of water’
(Chambers,1986 p. 54). The metaphor ‘night’ translates into situations where institutions, similar to
those explored in this paper, have become dysfunctional. The paper begins by contextualizing
‘irrigation by night’ in the past and present policy frameworks of South Africa. This serves to
problematize and conceptualize the central question of the paper. The following section is a condensed
description of the importance of water for home garden production for food security in the Eastern
Cape. The emerging dynamics cannot be understood without an analysis of a range of rural policy
interventions before, during and after apartheid, either directly or indirectly, targeting land and water
use. Land settlement planning of the late 1800s, betterment schemes, homeland policies, programmers
to supply potable water and, more recently, water harvesting programmers all have to be taken into
account in order to understand the broader policy dimensions that pertain to water and land. All these
interventions have left their trace in the villages of the Eastern Cape. This forms the background to the
next section, which focuses on the use of water for productive purposes in rural villages in the central
Eastern Cape.
Reflection:

All the population in the world consumes food in order to live. With this, a sustainable system
must be established to ensure that all of us can eat whenever it is needed and this is we called FOOD
SECURITY. One of those systems is the construction of good quality irrigation from its resources to
the farmlands and agricultural establishments that produces our food that we are eating in our plates
daily.

Some countries in the world like Kenya and South Africa experiences long drought which
lessen their food production annually. In correlation with this, Kenya together with South Africa
realizes that their population are suffering from scarcity of food which affects almost half of their
citizens. They pointed out that the modernization and improvement of waterways and irrigation system
might help to boost the food production in there respective country. Both countries formulated a
different methodology that ensures the aim of there solution to the problem. Now, because of extensive
research and strong will of the government to achieved the goal helps the citizen enjoy their food in
their own plates.

Irrigation is part of the system which the community belongs. It is one of the fuel which the
society is needed to work and sustain. It is now into the people to use it in the best possible way to
ensure not just Food Security but to ensure the life of all who depends on it.

References:

John, K. (2013). “MPACT OF IRRIGATION SCHEME ON FOOD SECURITY: A CASE OF WEI-WEI

RRIGATION SCHEME IN CENTRAL POKOT DISTRICT, WEST POKOT COUNTY, KENYA”.
etrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0587/144ae0b1a0b56ae34e7 5ef82c4915f21
3.pdf.

Horst, B., Hebinck, P. (2017). “rrigation by night’ in the Eastern Cape, South Africa”. Retrieved from
ttps://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=5&sid=05871c27-6c80-405e-99e8-
7af145b383a%40sessionmgr4006