Farmers Tackle Water Problems Fuelled by Climate Change
By Ignatius Banda
PLUMTREE, Zimbabwe, Mar 2, 2012 (IPS) – Beauty Moyo’s desire for access to
water has finally been met. The rains that fell in the past week after a
long dry patch have awakened this small-holder farmer deep in rural
Plumtree, Zimbabwe on the border with Botswana to the reality of sparse
rainfall, climate change and how she and her fellow villagers can respond.
Plumtree, like most parts of southwestern Zimbabwe, is notorious for low
rainfall. But millions of farmers in the country rely on rain-fed
agriculture and food they grow themselves, which presents villagers like
Moyo with tough choices.
“The rains that fell this week have been able to bring back hope as we had
sunk our own reservoir to trap the water,” Moyo said.
She says she teamed up with other neighbours during the course of the year,
and they invested their energies in digging what looks like a miniature
golf-course waterway.
“This idea came after people realised we have been complaining each year
about poor rainfall and harvests,” Moyo told IPS.
This reservoir water is used in farming activities where the subsistence
farmers say instead of spraying the whole field with water, they now water
individual plants.
“It’s a lot of work, but it helps conserve our water,” said Susan Mathebula,
another villager working on the project with Moyo.
“We had heavy rains that we had not seen in a long time, with ice falling,
and we were able to trap the water in this small catchment we set up
ourselves,” Mathebula told IPS in mid-February.
While drinking water is available from such sources as boreholes, Mathebula
says their major concern is water for irrigation purposes, as they plant
their own food and cannot rely on rainfall alone for the maize and
groundnuts they grow in their small fields.
Plumtree is one of the areas lying on the southwestern belt that experienced
localised heavy downpours in the last week of February, with the Zimbabwe
Meteorological Service Department announcing that the nation should expect
more rainfall in the next two months.
Hope is returning that the water they have will ensure adequate household
food security at a time when humanitarian agencies such as the Famine Early
Warning System – Network (FEWS-NET) announced early this year that millions
of Zimbabweans will require food aid.
Climate change and water shortages are among the issues being debated at a
two-week session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) Feb. 25
through Mar. 7 at U.N. headquarters in New York, which is focusing on the
empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication
and sustainable development.
Aid agencies have tied food insecurity to climate change that has pushed
rains in Zimbabwe far into the new year, when many farmers had prepared the
land for the planting season in the last quarter of last year.
The rains began to fall in February, and the meteorological department
announced that farmers can expect more rains in the next two months.
According the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), women remain in
the vanguard of farming in rural areas, which are home to 70 percent of
Zimbabweans, and community-based initiatives such as the creation of
reservoirs by Moyo, Mathebula and other villagers only highlight the dire
circumstances these women find themselves in, with little assistance from
government and nongovernmental organisations.
Josephine Conjwayo, an agricultural field officer from the Ministry of
Agriculture who works with small-holder farmers, said harnessing water for
agriculture by rural communities in response to climate change challenges
has been limited by the absence of experts in rural areas.
“Every area (in Matebeleland) we have visited to assess farming activities,
the issue of low rainfall and suffering crops is typical. Trapping rainwater
is one of the measures we have encouraged for these women, but this water
tends to be exhausted quickly as people use it for purposes other than
farming,” Conjwayo said.
What has exacerbated the challenges faced by small-holders such as Mathebula
is the inability by government and farming organisations to set up
strategies for small-holders to respond to climate change, resulting in
villagers coming up with their own initiatives.
The Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union says rural small-holder farmers are
providing the bulk of maize consumed in urban areas, as these farmers do not
sell their produce at the Grain Marketing Board, and laments the lack of
government support for farmers.
Last year, the Climate and Development Knowledge Network partnered with the
Zimbabwean government to map climate change policy, and according to
preliminary research, changing rainfall patterns are expected, as well as
temperature increases and extreme weather events such as floods and
droughts.
It is these circumstances villagers in Plumtree are experiencing, and
Mathebula, Moyo and many others respond the only way they know how: thinking
on their feet.
“There is very little we can do here,” Moyo told IPS. “But we hope the water
we trap will last us long enough to see our crops grow,” she said as she
tended the small maize crop that is beginning to sprout after the recent
downpours.