Author(s): Andre Van Rooyen; Hnning Bjornlund; Jamie Pittock; Karen Parry

Linked Author(s): André Van Rooyen

Keywords: Irrigation; Circular agri-food systems; Innovation; Sub-Saharan Afric

Abstract: The developing world and Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, are facing numerous challenges. Food security and poor nutrition, environmental degradation, social and economic inequalities, and slow economic growth can be addressed individually but may be better addressed following integrated systems approaches. Irrigation is crucial to increasing food production, but schemes often fail because developers focus on infrastructural development without incorporating critical system elements. Irrigation increases production potential in areas where rainfall limits productivity, but it increases the cost and complexity of production. Infrastructures are not maintained, resulting in high water losses, low productivity, and ultimately, irrigators inability to pay water bills and abandoned schemes. This paper argues that irrigation schemes can play significant roles in transforming local economies. To do that, a new irrigation development paradigm is needed to increase productivity and, more importantly, to widen the benefits beyond those with access to irrigated fields. We propose that integrating dry-land agriculture with irrigated cropping systems will generate synergies beneficial to both production systems and create more livelihood opportunities than the isolated systems combined. To further extend these integrated systems' benefits, we propose developing the local economy through small and medium enterprises supporting them, providing inputs and processing outputs while recycling the byproducts to offset input costs and reduce possible pollution. To achieve greater production efficiencies, we need to improve output/input ratios, reduce losses and wastage of all resources, reduce production costs, and increase the value of the produced outputs. Furthermore, these systems need to be socially, economically and environmentally sustainable and resilient. We propose that irrigation systems represent the central element around which circular food systems and associated economies can develop. Most irrigation systems acquire inputs over long distances, and export raw food products to urban areas where they are processed and packaged, for some to be transported back to consumers near their origin. The essence of circularity is to reduce the costs, financial and environmental, of transporting inputs to production areas and outputs to urban areas. Large industrial processors discard byproducts as waste as they may not have any value or use near cities and transporting it to where it may have value as inputs in production, will be too costly. Processing and value addition near the origin reduce transportation costs of bulky raw products, and local small-scale processing will create jobs and provide rural entrepreneurial opportunities, which will generate local buying power and counter urbanization. In short, we want to reduce food miles and losses, recycle byproducts, and generate economic opportunities near irrigation systems and reduce the local cost of nutrient-dense food. We draw on examples from our projects in Tanzania and Zimbabwe to illustrate the potential socio-economic benefits from circular food system centred on smallholder irrigation schemes.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/IAHR-39WC252171192022833

Year: 2022