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By: Immaculate Amony
A group of women in Lira district has embraced planting quick-maturing crops, such as eggplant, tomatoes, carrots, and cabbages, all year round as an intervention to mitigate the effects of prolonged dry seasons.
During the dry season, women collect water from ponds, boreholes, or unprotected wells to irrigate their gardens, using plastic bottles of mineral water and soda.
The simple irrigation technique has helped women to produce adequate food for their families, but it is also a source of income through the sale of surplus production.
Susan Akullo, the chairperson of Orit Community-based Monitors in Agweng sub-county, Lira District, explained that with the simple irrigation technique, their families are assured of vegetable production throughout the year.
Orit Community-based Monitors group comprises 20 members -16 females and 4 males- who were once digging in the wetland, which was not only eroding the soil and threatening their source of water but also causing the loss of some plant and animal species.
They have since abandoned the practice of farming in the wetlands.
“We plant vegetables in the upland even during the dry season because you see these plastic bottles like for sodas, which are normally thrown away, we collect them and use them to irrigate the plants so that your plant always has water even when it is generally dry,” she said.
The group has two ways of irrigating their crops; bottle irrigation, where a plastic bottle is horizontally cut open, each half filled up with water and placed under the plant, and drip irrigation, where, through a series of small holes on the plastic bottle top, water is slowly released to a plant’s roots at all times.
This irrigation technique allows farmers to repurpose all their used water or other beverage bottles, preventing them from contaminating the environment.
Akullo said: “In case the garden is relatively large, we use a watering can to water the plants twice a day- in the morning and later in the evening.”
This is the women’s way of mitigating the effects of climate change on them, their children, and families in general, because they experience climate change first hand through both changes in weather patterns and poor crop yield in the once-dependable crops.
However, for a woman like Stella Owera who is locally irrigating her crops, she is feeding her family well and as well as earning from the sale of vegetables.
“From the nursery bed, I realised that after transplanting my eggplants without drip irrigation, I would not get anything out of it. Now I know that even without rain, I can still harvest my vegetables and take good care of my family,” she said.
Currently, I harvest my crops every three months. The last time I harvested, I got about UGX.600,000, but I am pretty sure the amount will increase this coming dry season because not many people have vegetables,” she added.
Although women play a vital role in the world’s food production, climate change has had a huge impact on them.
UN Women suggests that by 2050, climate change may push up to 158 million more women and girls into poverty, and cause 232 million to face food insecurity.
This exposes them to a greater risk of gender-based violence due to climate disasters.
Akullo, however, says since their husbands and children all have the same knowledge, the work is simplified in a way that even in her absence, the garden is irrigated by the family members.
“Our husbands are helping us, for example, when it comes to planting tomatoes, they are involved,” she testified, adding “even the children help us with work like fixing bottles for drip irrigation, which they do in our absence and we only return in the evening to find the gardens irrigated.”
To boost their production, the members of the Orit Community-based Monitors group received training on climate-smart farming from Meaningful Empowerment for Change and Poverty Alleviation (MECPA) and were supported to plan for sustainable utilisation of wetlands coupled with alternative sources of livelihood.
A similar development is taking place in Kwania district, where a group of women has crafted a new way of farming dubbed “well-watered garden.”
The women plant any kind of vegetable in a 6X6 plot of land, especially near the compound, which makes it easy for them to water.
Harriet Ajwang Obote, a resident of Telela Central village in Akali sub-county in Kwania district, is one of the women who have planted carrots and other vegetables for home consumption.
She uses a watering can to irrigate her garden twice a day, ensuring that the crops have enough moisture.
Ajwang is also making her compost manure and pesticides from organic materials found at her home to use in her garden. She says her family has never run short of food.
“I started with mulching, which keeps the soil under the crops moist at all times. When it becomes dry like now, I simply fetch water from the borehole and water the entire plot,” he disclosed.
“Now I plan to plot this entire area (pointing at a piece of land where she has just harvested groundnuts from) for planting more vegetables during the coming dry season,” said Ajwang.
Denis Otim Otoo, the Senior Agricultural Engineer at Lira District Local Government, is concerned that not many farmers are embracing irrigation, yet the Lango sub-region is generally experiencing a reduction in food production due to the effects of climate change.
“Our farmers have this mindset of getting free things, but this government program of small-scale irrigation says any farmer interested should first have some technology being practised and should be able to co-fund.”
Otoo asserted that the system is quite advanced because a farmer needs a water pump, a service pump, and must have land so that the program does not go to any farmer who doesn’t have anything.
He urged the farmers to venture into bottle irrigation, which to him is cost-effective and easy to manage.
“With it, the affordability is high because you just need to have a small jerrican or bottle which you fill up with water, put it at a one-meter-high level and open it to flow under the plant,” he explained.
Otoo cautioned that: “Nowadays, weather patterns have changed. It is no longer the way we used to think that on the 15th of March rain has to fall, no, it’s not. The only way we can improve our household income is by embracing technologies that allow a farmer can have access to his or her water.”
According to him, relying on rainfed agriculture is currently not a viable option for farmers.
“You cannot sit home and wait for rain when you do not know when it is going to come. A farmer should have the initiative of ensuring the garden has water and grow high-value crops like vegetables,” he emphasised.
“We want to get out of this system where our vegetables like cabbages still come from Eastern Uganda.”
Otoo reminded the people about the government’s plan to improve production by having every farmer practice irrigation farming by 2040, ensuring that at least 1.5 million farmers have access to small-scale irrigation technologies.
Information from the Lira district production department indicates that 45 farmers have been supported to set up small-scale irrigation under the Uganda Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfer (UgIFT) Micro-Scale Irrigation Program.
This story was produced with support from InfoNile in partnership with Palladium under the Climate Smart Jobs.
