At the Hague conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change, Farming First held a side event ‘Best practices in agricultural value chains’, where spokespeople presented examples of initiatives that aim to increase resilience and productivity at different points in the value chain.
Drip Irrigation Kits
Christian Rouxel from the European Irrigation Association presented on drip irrigation kits that help ensure efficient irrigation, helping to produce more crop per water drop. The introduction of modern drip irrigation and agriculture methods to smallholders in the Sahel region offered an affordable system that introduced new crops and markets to farmers. Contrasting to traditional irrigation techniques which often use an excessive volume of water and offer limited control of irrigation, modern drip irrigation helps produce more crop from the same available water resources.
The EIA equipped farmers with 900 drip irrigation kits and initially selected 30 “opinion leader farmers” as the pilot group, to help promote the widespread allocation of all the systems throughout the region. Training and extension service centres were then established to help introduce the systems to a wide range of users.
For more information on this project, see the presentation.