Loren Staddard, director of USAID’s alternative development and agriculture project in Kabul said, Hydroflumes save all of the water that normally transits through secondary earth canals where up to 30 percent is lost through seepage and line theft.
The country has lost much of its irrigation infrastructure due to war conditions over the past three decades. The regular natural disasters, especially drought, have also caused major damage to agriculture that is around 80% of its rain-fed agriculture was lost due to a severe drought in 2008 and many farming households were pushed into acute food insecurity as a result.
Scarcity of water is our biggest problem, said Amanullah, a farmer in southern Kandahar Province.
Hydroflume water-saving system: This system is a collapsible plastic tube, available in different sizes, with holes at set intervals to feed water to furrows. It prevents water loss, directly irrigates targeted crops and avoids watering non-fertile soil.
This system is sometimes called as a drip irrigation system and is easy to use. It can be rolled out at the end of the field, perpendicular to the furrows and can be rolled up again like a giant fire hose and kept for future use.
It requires a turnout box for the canal water to flow into, largely to provide a place to mount to a pipe fitting to connect the fluming [collapsible plastic tube] to the water source canal, Staddard said.
Affordability:
Currently, USAID has set up different kinds of hydroflume for demonstration and training purposes at the Agriculture Ministry’s Badam Bagh research centre in Kabul. The prices per metre of the system vary from $1 to $5 based on the size and strength of the flume.
USAID will invest about $1.5 million in this technology, helping to make it commercially and sustainably available for the small, medium and large farmers of Afghanistan, Staddard said.
Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) has reported that this technology will improve productivity, but how the rural farming communities access and use it will be a challenge.
Most of our farmers are illiterate and uneasy about using new technology, Pir Mohammad Aziz, deputy irrigation minister of the MAIL.
