Category: IRRIGATION

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that a bulk of food producers in Africa, up to33 million farmers who produce 70 percent of the food, are smallholder farmers who have traditionally relied on rain-fed agriculture for their production. Now, with erratic rainfall patterns and extreme climate conditions, farmers have recorded crop failures and dismal yields that continue…

To promote all year-round farming, the Federal Government through the Federal Ministry of Water Resources has handed over twelve rehabilitated irrigation systems to farmers in Kano. The Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, at the handing over ceremony on Wednesday, noted that the recipients were farmers under the Kano River Irrigation Scheme (KRIS), saying KRIS…

Chinese farmers have greatly increased maize plantings this year at the expense of soya bean and other crops, including sorghum and edible beans. This was in an attempt to cash in on record prices fuelled by strong demand. It was expected that this trend would reduce the country’s recent strong demand for maize imports going…

Irrigation schemes in sub-Saharan Africa don’t measure up to their plans according to new research into the projects by scientists. Many of the schemes were found to be consistently delivering a much smaller area of irrigation or are completely broken and things aren’t improving. Large-scale irrigation infrastructure projects are back on the development agenda in…

Valley Irrigation, The Leader in Precision Irrigation®, has acquired PrecisionKing, a Mississippi-based ag tech company with products focused on moisture monitoring, pump control and remote sensing, especially of flood irrigation. “We are excited about this acquisition for many reasons,” says Darren Siekman, Vice President of Water Delivery & Business Development for Valley. “It strengthens our…

The South African government should rather recast its vision of agricultural development using chapter six of the National Development Plan as a point of departure. The NDP proposed a three-tier approach for agriculture and agro-processing to reach its fullest potential of creating one million jobs by 2030, namely the development of underutilised land especially in…

A LOCAL tech start-up, Iris Dynamics, is seeking to promote drone irrigation to improve harvests at a time unpredictable weather conditions are threatening Zimbabwe’s food security. Iris Dynamics was established in 2018 by its CEO Nyasha Hambira (26), a graduate from Australia’s Sydney University, with a goal of making the company a leading provider of…

To overcome these challenges in sustainable and transformative ways, there must be consistent investment in innovation, and collaboration that can help boost the sector’s contribution to the economy, and create a food-secure future for South Africa and of the rest of the continent. According to the United Nations (UN), the continent is still recovering after the Covid-19…

When was the last time you really wanted to buy a policy? People buy insurance begrudgingly and moan when the debit orders hit their bank accounts every month. Who even bothers to actually read the policy? And then when people need it, they flounder about, trying to make it work. It doesn’t need to be…

A greater dependency on technology, particularly on large-scale farming operations, has led to a dependency on electricity. This can be in the form of basic production equipment, such as irrigation systems, or systems built to add value to primary produce, such as storage and processing. The fresh produce and meat industries, for example, would fall…