Sustainable Agriculture

Climate change impacts on our environment, economy, and social welfare are unavoidable issues; it has a serious impact on people situated in rural areas who make a living relying on agriculture. This project aim at addressing the issues of poor farming practices that contributes to climate change effects with possible mitigation and adaptation measures.

The introduction of solar water pump system is an innovative renewable energy technologies that reduces the emission of greenhouse gases; the technology is gradually replacing the use of diesel water pump that emits a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, the carbon emission from the diesel motor pump increases climate change effects and is very expensive to operate by small holder farmers.

The Solar water pump experience is a system that involves directly coupling a small DC electric pump to a single solar panel, without any battery or controller. This allows a farmer to have constant running water from a pipe throughout the day, as long as the sun is shining.  When the day’s work is finished, the farmer simply takes the pump home, to avoid the issue of theft.

This innovative experience came in as a result of different efforts trying to solve the problem of uplifting water from streams, wells, canals etc by small holder’s farmers to their farms. Before arriving at this innovative stage, three experiments has been carried out which include;

-The use of 15 -20 litres watering cans which was laboured intensive (running to stream or canal several times to supply water to the crops) Farmers were able to cultivate only small portion of their plots due the intensive labour involved in supplying water to the crops.

-The uses of suspended 200 litres drum above the well, canals and streams to supply water by gravity through water pipes. Again farmers were not able to supply water to a considerable portion on their plots due to the labour and risk of accident involved. The platform was constructed with local material and carries 200 litres together with the farmer during filling of the 200 litres drum which can collapse at any time.

This system is expensive to manage by small holder farmers because of the high cost of fuel, spare parts and repairs