Due to the technological change and assistance from World Bank, in many African countries particularly Nigeria, motorised pumps have largely replaced traditional irrigation systems such as shadoof and calabash. After surveying 250 households on the Hadejia-Nguru floodplain, 56% have now converted to using pumps, with 30% of these have not previously irrigated during the dry season. (Kimmage and Adams 1990)
Technical Description
- 2-3in large, and can be carried on the back of a bicycle.
- Operating lift of 6-8m but can deliver 12-30m if needed.
- Discharge: 4litres/s for 2in pump with tubewell, or 23l/s for 4in pump from open water.
- Average irrigated plot size- 0.7-0.9ha (Singh 1986)
- Estimated working time 3/4 years, lifetime of 300-600 hr per year.
Costs and Benefits of Pumps
Purchase costs offset by high returns- pumps are economically attractive to small farmers. ADP research suggests the pump cost can be covered in 1-2 seasons.
However there are high maintenance costs associated with the pumps, in Bauchi State 40% of pumps broke down within first year, with 23 days lost due to breakdowns (Chapman 1984).There is also great difficulty in obtaining spare parts for pumps and these are usually very expensive and thus unaffordable for many small farmers.
(Kimmage and Adams 1990) also note that pump irrigation is also closely tied to the market, due to high capital costs farmers are avoiding planting low value crops in order to obtain higher profits. This leads to increasing market imbalances, as increased overproduction of high value crops,created oversupply, resulting in distortion of prices from equilibrium and hence farmers receive a lower price for their crops than initially.
Although there are some limitations, pump irrigation allows farmers to be increasingly flexible and adapt to market opportunities. The ban on wheat imports in Nigeria in 1997 with a following price hike, created an incentive for farmers to switch to wheat production due to availability of pump irrigation. Moreover because they can now plant during the dry season, farmers have seen an increase in agricultural output, as a result of rapid expansion of cultivated areas. They are now able to plant all year around,not just for 6 months of the year.
Overall the article raises some important concerns about the nature of pump irrigation, with an analysis of the limitations and welfare benefits of this system for small scale groundwater irrigation. However I believe that it misses out some important questions, with regards to suitability and sustainability of pump irrigation. I think that the extent to which farmers benefit from motorised pump will primarily depend on their access to markets, and how easily they can sell their crops to others. This will largely determine if they actually have an economic profit from their production. This is of course constrained by a whole range of other factors, ie transportation, infrastructure etc. Finally (Kimmage and Adams 1990) suggest that the costs of pumps may be initially too high for farmers, and expensive to maintain. They mention that some subsidies are in place to help them overcome this difficulty, but is there anything more governments could do to advocate more pump use? Such as reducing price, more subsidies/grants, assistance for maintenance ? I think that if pump irrigation is actually effective, governments should do a lot more to expand it amongst poorer farmers and assist them in acquiring the technology that would benefit them in the long term. The sustainability of this should also be noted, if the system is too troublesome, maybe they should look into development of more simple and easy technologies that doesn't require intricate parts or a lot of fuel to power the irrigation. This is something I will look into in the next post :)
What are your thoughts so far? Do you think that this is a reasonable approach to advocating groundwater irrigation?
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