IRRIGATION AS A SERVICE TO SMALLHOLDER FARMERS

In northern Nigeria, dry season production poses a number of challenges to many farmers, especially smallholder farmers, who constitute about 88% of the farmers in Nigeria. Many farmers farm in wet season alone, while only few practice dry-season production, using manual labor or pumping machines to irrigate the crops on the fields. However, this has been discouraging and has posed many risks and challenges to smallholder farmers and sometimes beyond the control of farmers, such as high energy cost to power machines, insecurity and theft of equipments etc.

The conventional irrigation approach often presents a number of challenges such as flooding from the uncontrolled application of water, which can cause loss of nutrients and, ultimately, crop failure. Also, lack of access to sufficient water source for irrigation, as most of these water bodies are unsafe for machine, crop and soil health. It is expensive to sustain an effective water management system especially during dry season as it requires sizable capital to fund and this discourages many smallholder farmers from carrying out irrigation farming during dry seasons.

A fresh approach in this regard showing great results is irrigation as a service to smallholder farmers. This service is hinged on clustering which enables base for investment in a comprehensive irrigation system to serve multiple small holder farmers in one location making cost bearable as it is shared amongst each other. This way the farmers can focus on what they enjoy best – farming while the partnering business takes the burden of efficient water management off them.

This irrigation rendered services will help boost the productivity of agricultural crops, thus increasing the farmers’ income. The farmer is also assured of production all through the year while enhancing further the competitiveness and resilience of smallholder farmers.

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