Network irrigation, Solar solutions to boost year-round rice farming

Experts say Nigeria’s celebrated bountiful rice harvest during last dry season’s cultivation in the north could be increased up to three-fold if water from existing dams is channeled in a networked manner to access several farms in the coming dry season when rice yields are typically higher than in the rainny season.
The last rice harvest saw 40,000 millionaire farmers emerging in just Kebbi state , where 1.1 million metric tonnes of paddy rice was harvested in the dry season alone.
As rice cultivation gains traction in Nigeria, northern farmers gearing up for the next dry season planting are looking forward to cheaper, more efficient sources of water for their farms.
Dry season cultivation gives more than double the yield of wet season planting but its major downside has been the cost of operation, especially in terms of running power generating sets which need to constantly pump water to the rice fields.
“The most expensive input used on the farm is petrol” Muhammed Augie, chairman, Rice Farmers Association in Kebbi tells BusinessDay.
Augie explains that petrol is bought every day and used to power water pumps for 10-12 hours to keep rice fields’ watered depending on the size of the farm.
“If this is substituted, it will go a long way in making the cost of production cheaper,” he says.
Frans Ojielu, global financial advisor, ICMG Commodities also said “the deployment of solar pumps will reduce fuelling cost per hectare by 80 percent. In addition, it will make operations easier as less human energy will be applied.”
“Last season some farmers bought petrol for N400 per litre but that still did not deter them from production, so if they can get a cheaper source of irrigation for their farms, that will also reduce the cost of production, also bringing down the price of rice in the market,” Garuba Dangiga, Kebbi state commissioner for agriculture told BusinessDay.
Scarcity and other uncertainties could make the price of fuel soar, making it difficult for farmers to cultivate rice during the dry season which starts in December. This is throwing up an opportunity to fill the void in a market of over 500,000 farmers now venturing into rice production.
Yahaya Adamu Yusuf, chairman, Rice Farmers Association, Bauchi also expressed similar views that while solar pumps are not yet in use in his state, he is confident an opportunity to have them on the farms will lower operational costs and allow farmers devote more man hours to other farm activities; instead of sourcing for water.
As at the last count by BusinessDay, in Kebbi state alone, 78,000 farmers were captured under the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN); Kano has registered 35, 000 farmers while Bauchi state intends to enrol 50,000 farmers at the end of this year. This will give a total of 163,000 farmers from only three states, while several others are eligible for similar intervention.
In Kebbi however, over 200,000 farmers participated in this year’s dry season rice farming.
When other states where rice is grown are added it shows there are over 500,000 farmers who could make use of these solar powered pumps that will reduce their costs of operations and also improve their productivity.
Stakeholders say there is a glaring need for increased mechanisation to increase farm yields.
“The mechanisation is really in the area of “transplanters”, because most of the areas used for dry season planting are not hard soil. When we have simple planters and herbicide sprayers, which are maybe mounted on tractors, this will help farmers,” Yusuf said
another time mechanisation is really needed is during harvesting, when a lot of production costs shoot up. Reapers, winnowers and other equipment are needed to improve harvesting, optimise yield, while also reducing impurities in rice paddy.
Augie of the rice farmers in Kebbi, told BusinessDay that with adequate mechanisation from farm preparation to harvesting, average yields would increase from 5.5 metric tonnes per hectare to at least seven metric tonnes per hectare.
“Our plan for the next season is to introduce mechanisation; both in land preparation and in harvesting of rice. By doing that, we are reducing dredging, and increasing man hour production. That will certainly even quadruple the production level of our rice in Kebbi,” said Dandiga, Kebbi’s commissioner for agric.
Equally important is the need for increased innovation for new irrigation systems such as gravity irrigation which applies irrigation water to fields by letting it flow from a higher level supply canal through ditches or furrows to fields at a lower level.
“Like what is happening in Kano now, they have dams connected through a network to the farms. While a farmer could spend N80,000 worth of fuel per hectare in a planting season, with an innovation like gravity irrigation, a farmer will not spend more than N2, 000,” said Augie.
A gravity fed irrigation system is a cheap effective way to provide water for a smaller sized crop area. It would be especially cost effective if the climate of the area can provide enough precipitation to consistently keep a reservoir filled, using rain water harvesting techniques. The basic system is very simple and consists of an elevated reservoir with a pipe coming out the bottom that feeds water into a basic drip irrigation system that is all controlled either by hand or with a very efficient battery powered timer that controls the rate at which the crop is watered.
Dandiga further expatiates that “by establishing more dams from which farmers can irrigate their farms through gravity, cost of production will be low, likewise the cost of selling the produce. Or in the alternative, if we can get solar pumps that will reduce the cost of production so that farmers will not have to buy fuel every day.”
While this may not throw up direct investment opportunities for the private sector , it surely suggests the need for government at the federal level to work towards establishing more dams across the country, particularly in geographies where they can feed farms.