Micro-Irrigation: MoneyMakers pumps for vegetable production in West Africa

In the hot, dry regions of West Africa, small-scale farmers may spend as many as five hours a day hauling water in calabashes (hollowed, dried out squashes) or plastic buckets to irrigate their crops. But now farmers can make more money without breaking their backs, thanks to “Affordable Micro-Irrigation for Vegetable Production in West Africa,” an initiative of the AVRDC-World Vegetable Centre with support from the Taiwan Government Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Super MoneyMaker Pump. Photo: Kickstart

Known in Mali as “nafasoro,” the MoneyMaker pump, developed by KickStart, is one of the more widely adopted tools in the region. The pumps are available in two models: a pedal pump, the Super MoneyMaker, which costs 49,500 cfa [US$ 93], and a manual pump, the MoneyMaker Hip Pump, which costs 22,000 cfa [US$ 37].

“[Kickstart’s pump] has very good prospects for riverbank vegetable gardening and irrigating vegetables even about 75-80 meters from river sources,” said Dr. Madhu Bhattarai, an agricultural economist at AVRDC.

Super MoneyMaker Pump

The Super MoneyMaker Pressure Pump was launched in October 1998, in response to a demand by farmers for a pump that can push water uphill as well as simply pulling it up from the source. This means it is suitable for use on steeply sloping land where the water source may be at the bottom. Thousands use it to pump water from hand-dug wells, rivers, streams, lakes and ponds. It is ideal for sprinkler irrigation, filling overhead water tanks, or for use with nozzles and sprays attached to the end of the delivery hose. The pump can draw water up from 7 metres and has a total pumping head of 14 metres. It can be used to irrigate up to 2 acres [8,000 square metres] of land. KickStart says it has sold over 114,000 Super MoneyMaker Pumps to date.

MoneyMaker Hip Pump

MoneyMaker Hip Pump. Photo: Kickstart

Kickstart developed the MoneyMaker Hip Pump to create a lower cost and lighter weight, portable pump. It debuted in stores in 2006. Sales and marketing efforts began in 2008. The pump is very light (only 4.5 kg or less) and can irrigate an acre. According to Kickstart it has a “super efficient valve box” and a simple pivot hinge

By attaching a “Hand Pump” to a hinged platform, it allows users to use their leg, body weight, and momentum, rather than the small muscles of the upper back and shoulders. The pump can irrigate an acre [4,000 square metres] or more.

Training

To encourage farmers from Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Ghana to adopt better crop management practices, AVRDC started holding training workshops for farmers and communities in December 2009. These workshops focus on explaining irrigation systems, such as the KickStart pump, and better water management.

Mali

In Mali, where AVRDC worked with the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) to demonstrate technologies, more than 6,000 pumps were sold and 5,000 enterprises were created. Farmers have become actively involved in testing and adapting equipment for their vegetable gardens. Currently, more than 150 women farmers are growing vegetables using affordable micro-irrigation methods, including drip irrigation kits, pedal pumps, and microsprinklers.

Investing in micro-irrigation technologies may seem daunting for small-scale farmers, but the venture has proved to bring a reliable return on investment. Mahmoud Guindo, a farmer in Mali, doubled his annual income selling fruits and vegetables after purchasing the MoneyMaker irrigation pump. In addition to being able to irrigate crops more easily, farmers like Mahmoud can now expand their planting area of high-value crops such as fruits and vegetables and cultivate several crops year-round, yielding a steadier, higher income.

To learn more about ways that irrigation technologies are helping small-scale farmers improve their incomes and livelihoods, see Innovation of the Week: Slow and Steady Irrigation Wins the Race, Getting Water to Crops, and Access to Water Improves Quality of Life for Women and Children.

To learn more about MoneyMaker Irrigation Pumps see Kickstart’s brochure.

Source: Kickstart's brochure on the MoneyMaker Irrigation Pumps

Source: Alex Tung, Nourishing the Planet, 29 Jun 2010

Solar-powered irrigation significantly improves diet and income in rural Sub-Saharan Africa

Solar-powered drip irrigation systems significantly enhance household incomes and nutritional intake of villagers in arid sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new Stanford University study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The two-year study found that solar-powered pumps installed in remote villages in the West African nation of Benin were a cost-effective way of delivering much-needed irrigation water, particularly during the long dry season.

“Significant fractions of sub-Saharan Africa’s population are considered food insecure,” wrote lead author Jennifer Burney, a postdoctoral scholar with the Program on Food Security and the Environment and the Department of Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford. “Across the region, these food-insecure populations are predominantly rural, they frequently survive on less than $1 per person per day, and whereas most are engaged in agricultural production as their main livelihood, they still spend 50 to 80 percent of their income on food, and are often net consumers of food.”

Burney and her co-authors noted that only 4 percent of cropland in sub-Saharan Africa is irrigated, and that most rural, food-insecure communities in the region rely on rain-fed agriculture, which, in places like Benin, is limited to a three- to six-month rainy season.

“On top of potential annual caloric shortages, households face two seasonal challenges: They must stretch their stores of staples to the next harvest (or purchase additional food, often at higher prices), and access to micronutrients via home production or purchase diminishes or disappears during the dry season,” the authors wrote.

Promotion of irrigation among small landholders is therefore frequently cited as a strategy for poverty reduction, climate adaptation and promotion of food security, they said. And while the role of irrigation in poverty reduction has been studied extensively in Asia, relatively little has been written about the poverty and food security impacts in sub-Saharan Africa.

Benin demonstration sites

To address the lack of data, Burney and her colleagues monitored three 0.5-hectare (1.24-acre) solar-powered drip irrigation systems installed the Kalalé district of northern Benin. The systems, which use photovoltaic pumps to deliver groundwater, were financed and installed by the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), a nongovernmental organization.

“As with any water pump, solar-powered pumps save labor in rural off-grid areas where water hauling is traditionally done by hand by women and young girls,” the authors said. “Though photovoltaic systems are often dismissed out-of-hand due to high up-front costs, they have long lifetimes, and in the medium-term, cost less than liquid-fuel-based pumping systems.”

Solar-powered pumps also can be implemented in an easily maintained, battery-free configuration, they added, “thereby avoiding one of the major pitfalls of photovoltaic use in the developing world.”

In November 2007, the research team began a close collaboration with local women’s agricultural groups in two villages in rural Benin. In Village A, which draws surface water from a year-round stream, researchers worked with residents to install two identical solar-powered pumping systems. In Village B, which relies on groundwater irrigation, water was pumped from 25 meters (82 feet) below the surface. Each solar-powered pumping system was used by 30 to 35 women affiliated with an agricultural group. Each woman farmed her own 120-square meter (1,292-square foot) plot. The remaining plots were farmed collectively to fund group purchases and expenses.

The researchers also chose two control villages for comparison with Villages A and B. Women’s agricultural groups in the control villages continued to irrigate by hand, allowing for comparison of the solar-powered drip irrigation systems to traditional methods. “Household surveys were conducted in both treatment and control villages upon installation (November 2007) and following one year of garden operation (November 2008), and included detailed questions concerning consumption and agricultural production, as well as other socioeconomic, health and general questions,” the authors wrote.

Striking results

The results were striking. The three solar-powered irrigation systems supplied on average 1.9 metric tons of produce per month, including tomatoes, okra, peppers, eggplants, carrots and other greens, the authors found. Woman who used solar-powered irrigation became strong net producers in vegetables with extra income earned from sales — significantly increasing their purchases of staples and protein during the dry season, and oil during the rainy season. During the first year of operation, the women farmers kept an average of 18 percent by weight — 8.8 kilograms (19.4 pounds) per month — of the produce grown with the solar-powered systems for home consumption and sold the rest in local markets.

“Garden products penetrated local markets significantly,” the authors found. “Vegetable consumption increased during the rainy season (the time of greatest surplus for the women’s group farmers) for the entire four-village sample of households.”

Survey respondents also were asked about their ability to meet their household food needs. Seventeen percent of the project beneficiaries said they were “less likely to feel chronically food-insecure. In short, the photovoltaic drip irrigation systems had a remarkable effect on both year-round and seasonal food access,” the authors said.

Nutrition and sustainability

In terms of nutrition, vegetable intake across all villages increased by about 150 grams per person per day during the rainy season. But in villages irrigated with solar-powered systems, the increase was 500 to 750 grams per person per day, which is equivalent to 3 to 5 servings of vegetables per day — the same as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Recommended Daily Allowance for vegetables — and most of this change took place in the dry season.

The research team also concluded that, despite higher up-front costs, using solar power to pump water can be more economically sustainable in the long run than irrigation systems that run on liquid fuels, such as gasoline, diesel or kerosene. “When considering the energy requirements for expanded irrigation in rural Africa, photovoltaic drip irrigation systems have an additional advantage over liquid-fuel-based systems in that they provide emissions-free pumping power,” they added.

“Overall, this study thus indicates that solar-powered drip irrigation can provide substantial economic, nutritional and environmental benefits,” the authors said. “With the proper support, successful widespread adoption of photovoltaic drip irrigation systems could be an important source of poverty alleviation and food security in the marginal environments common to sub-Saharan Africa.”

Other co-authors of the PNAS study are Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford’s Program on Food Security and the Environment and professor of environmental Earth system science; Lennart Woltering and Dov Paternak of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Niger; and Marshall Burke of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California-Berkeley.

The research was supported by an Environmental Venture Projects grant from the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. The results are published in the Jan. 4, 2010, online edition of PNAS.

Source: Stanford University, ScienceDaily. 05 Jan 2010

What does Africa need more – easy access to fresh water or better cheaper internet connections?

Rory Cellan-Jones, who blogs on technology for the BBC, travels to Mombassa, Kenya to see how a local NGO is using broadband Internet to bring water pumps to farmers. Here are excerpts from his blog entry of 15 September 2009.

The Super MoneyMaker Pump. Photo: KickStart

“My guide was Martin Rogena, a Kenyan working for an organisation called KickStart, which supplies irrigation pumps to farmers across East Africa. Martin is also a big believer in the power of the internet to transform countries like Kenya”.

“We set off [to] a poor suburb of Mombasa [where every shop] seemed to be selling mobile phones or offering to recharge them – and every few yards there was a stand selling fresh water at around 20p a litre”.

“Martin explained that Kickstart was a charity but it didn’t give away the “Moneymaker” pumps it supplies [but was charging] around £50 for a portable pump – far short of the cost of making and supplying them – and they are now in use right across drought-stricken areas of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda”.

“[At a] little settlement [...] about 10 miles from the beach where the Seacom cable bringing broadband to the region comes ashore, [Cellan-Jones met a group of] farmers who [...] had clubbed together to buy a pump. [The farmers supported around 20 people by growing tomatoes,] maize and some other vegetables”.

“These people had very little [and there was no electricity] but nearly all of them had mobile phones. [...] The farmers explained that the phones [...] had made them feel much more connected to the rest of Kenya”.

Martin Rogena of Kickstart on broadband. Photo: BBC

“Outside one of the huts, Martin Rogena got out his laptop, plugged in a broadband dongle [broadband wireless USB adaptor], and went online at a reasonable speed – he was picking up the signal from the nearby mast, which is in turn linked to the fibre-optic cable at the coast. But why, I asked, did a faster internet connection matter to a charity which was trying to alleviate the impact of drought?”.

“He explained that Kickstart collects data from every pump it supplies across the region, sending staff armed with laptops to talk to the farmers and make sure they are getting the right results. From its Nairobi office, It also needs to communicate with donors around the world and with its branch office in Tanzania”.

“The charity is already finding that faster broadband is making communication easier – and is cutting costs, though perhaps not to quite the extent that has been promised”.

“The farmers had never been on the internet – but they too were excited about what it might mean for them. “It will help us find information to help us improve the way we farm.” said one. “We will use it for marketing our crops to other countries outside Kenya,” said another”.

“We headed back into Mombasa, past lines of women carrying water containers on their heads. This country is short of lots of things – water, electricity, books for schools. But there is a great thirst for better connectivity – and who are we to say that they’ve got their priorities wrong?”.

Source: Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC dot.life, 15 Sep 2009

Greywater reuse: water treatment kit for household grey water

A kit designed to treat household waste water for reuse could be one of the ways to tackle water scarcity in rural areas of the Middle East and North Africa, according to a Canadian organisation.

“This is a household-based technology mainly for rural areas to treat grey water that comes from the kitchen sink and bath for re-use,” said Hammou Laamrani, project coordinator at the Regional Water Demand Initiative [WaDImena] of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), based in Canada.

[...] The kit consists of two large PVC barrels about 1.2m high, each able to contain up to 200 litres of water, pipes and sand. Before reaching the barrels, the waste water goes through a separate filter where things like small bits of food are removed. The barrels are filled with sand; there is an anaerobic digestion of the organic matter when the water goes through the sand filter and becomes cleaner.

“The quality of the treated water is improved chemically and biologically; it [the filter] removes the pathogens, particularly the E. coli that could pose a health risk. It also removes parasite eggs as they cannot go through the filter because the filter is a kind of a bio-membrane that removes all those things,” Laamrani explained.

[...] It has a socio-economic impact, it has a positive impact on the environment and it’s viable in terms of technology used,” Laamrani said.

Waste water treated by sand filter has very little nitrogen and potassium, and in terms of chemical pollution poses no risk for the soil, according to Laamrani. It is not a risk to soil because it does not have mineral components that can increase soil salinity and degradation, and it is not a risk to human beings in terms of exposure to pathogens, he said.

“It reduces the amount of water that goes into cesspits – sanitation in rural areas. So they don’t need to clean the cesspit so often – only once every three months, instead of once a week. This reduces the cost of emptying the cesspits,” he said.

“This water can also be used for productive purposes. It is used for the irrigation of saplings, particularly olive trees like we saw in Jordan… This water can also be reused in the household, like for flushing toilets,” he said.

However, it is not suitable for crops or vegetables consumed without cooking, like cucumbers and tomatoes, he said.

“The cost of the kit is $300-400, and in some cases even less depending on the price of components in any given market. If you take into account the productive use of the treated waste water and the reduced frequency of cesspit evacuation, outlay costs can be recouped in a year in places like Jordan and Lebanon,” the IDRC official said, adding that they also had projects in the occupied Palestinian territories and Yemen.

Maintenance is simple: sand in the barrels needs to be changed every 10-15 years, Laamrani said.

One of the drawbacks with the system initially was the smell: “There was no technology to remove the smell when the water was in the barrels. But it has been overcome with a new system that takes the gas out of the barrels… No longer is there a risk of attracting ants or other insects,” he said

Source: IRIN, 23 Mar 2009

See below IDRC”s Waste to Water video (in two parts) on the greywater reuse in the Middle East – Quicktime and Windowas versions are available here.