Rethinking Water Use

Among the buzzwords associated with Israel, alongside traditional catchwords such as shalom, kibbutz and falafel - is drip irrigation. Some of the participants in the 9th International Course on Crops for Arid and Semiarid Zones, Advanced Agrotechnologies held in Beersheva in November-December 1998 say they had read about drip irrigation, but in retrospect knew very little about it prior to the course. What they encountered, however, was something much broader: Not just a new technology, delivering water drop-by-drop only where and when it is needed, close to the root housing of each plant that participants hope to introduce in their own countries, but a new way of thinking about water and the plant-water-soil relationship.

The two-month course is held annually between mid-October to mid-December, the planting season in Israel's semi-arid Negev and arid Arava regions, thus offering participants ample opportunities to observe Israeli farming at the grass roots. Operated under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Center for International Cooperation - MASHAV - and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's Institutes for Applied Research, the course combines classroom lectures with hands-on experience and personal experimentation, explains Dr. Dov Sitton, an expert in medicinal plants and fruit quality, and course director.

Course work is divided into four areas. The first - an overview of the problems encountered in arid zones such as desertification and salinity. The second - lectures on water management and irrigation, including new methods of irrigation from drippers to mini-sprinklers, use of saline and recycled effluents, and new methods of water harvesting, encatchment of run-off in wet seasons. The third - a look at new crops suitable for arid zones such as salt-tolerant vegetables, domesticated cacti and rare fruit trees, optimization of grain production in arid regions, new industrial crops like jojoba, an oil-producing plant. And the last - problems and solutions to plant diseases in arid zones.

During their stay in Israel, the 31 participants - researchers, extension service agronomists and water management and development planners from 23 countries - conduct pot experiments of their own, with plants in buckets filled with various kinds of growth mediums, including peat moss and sand, using various water regimes and various sources of water, including saline water. The results, says Dr. Sitton, amplify what participants are hearing time after time in the classroom: that crops can be grown in all kinds of soil, or even without soil, and thrive on all kinds of water, including recycled sewage water and saline water. And perhaps most important, that crops can be grown more economically and often better quality with less water, a revolutionary thought for agriculturists from countries where flood irrigation is often the only kind of irrigation employed.

Field trips are an integral part of the curriculum. Thus, participants visit not only lsrael's National Water Carrier that transports water from the Sea of Galilee in the north all the way to the south; they also tour the Tel Aviv metropolitan area's sewage treatment plant Shafdan that recycles sewage water, channeling 100 million cubic meters for agricultural use, 10% of the water used by Israeli agriculture, all of it channeled to the northwestern Negev. Beyond look and see outings such as these and others, participants also get first-hand exposure to what they are learning in the classroom.

On one such trip, course members visit Kibbutz Hatzerim for some hands-on experience assembling drip irrigation system components and various designs of sprinklers. There is nothing like taking a length of blind pipe, cutting the pipe with a pair of pruning shears, gripping the pipe end in one hand and the molded dripper in the other - squeezing the two together to lock in place, or screwing together the coupling designed to join a drip irrigation line to the main feeder line, bare-handed without even a monkey wrench, to grasp, literally and figuratively, the simplicity and complex genius behind the system. The visit even provides an opportunity to experience opening coils of drip irrigation. While deployment can be done with large drums of drip irrigation hitched to a tractor, it can also be accomplished by hand, walking down the furrows to spread lines in rows.

Other field trips take course members to the fields and greenhouses of Israeli farmers where they can see both non-irrigated crops in the Negev and irrigation systems operating under field conditions, including fertigation, a method by which fertilizers are introduced to the plant dissolved in irrigation water, another advanced agrotechnology that participants label an eye-opener.

Bishnu Chapagain, from Nepal, assistant horticulturist at the district agricultural development office 150 km. from Kathmandu, heard about the course in arid and semiarid agriculture from a graduate of last year's course. Originally a researcher in potato tissue culture following his studies at the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Sciences at Tribhuvan University in Rampu, seven years ago Chapagain became an extension officer. "There are areas of Nepal where water sources are not properly used," he says. He was impressed by how drip irrigation could enhance conservation, in his country - preventing erosion by offering better methods of irrigating hilly and mountainous terrain. While rainfall is low, there is water in the mountains that is channeled to bottom lands by gravitation where it is used to irrigate crops. However, this causes erosion. Moreover, today Nepal imports vegetables from India. With drip irrigation he believes it would be possible to expand local production, on steep slopes and in greenhouses. "Climatic conditions and terrain make water harvesting, catching precipitation in the wet season, as in Israel, particularly attractive for Nepal. We saw low-cost methods of building reservoirs with plastic sheeting that I believe we can adapt to conditions in Nepal," he stressed.

Abyssinia Ndebele, from South Africa, works at the Beth El College Farm on the Eastern Cape near the town of Butterworth - a Christian mission where a staff of 24 people teach modern farming techniques to villagers. A year ago, as a delegate in a six-day tour in Israel initiated by the Israeli Embassy, he became aware that there was much to learn from Israeli agriculture, particularly learning to use water effectively - how much is really needed and what kind of water can be used. The mission has some 24 hectares in cabbage, but they and farmers in their area face two major problems.

"The 40 km radius area the Beth El Farm serves, small family farms, one to four hectares each - struggle with two factors that lead to run-off that effect quality of crops and cause erosion: sloping fields and clay soil. Drip irrigation will greatly improve the situation, and help prevent leaf diseases common with sprinkler systems," he believes. "I hope to convince the mission to set up a small pilot project, perhaps a one-hectare plot to see how drip irrigation works."

Abyssinia Ndebele stresses that he envisions demonstration and adaptation of Israeli technologies as having another beneficial affect: changing the status of agriculture in the eyes of South Africans. "Agriculture is considered a low-status occupation," he says. "We must reverse that thinking, show young people in rural areas that today's agriculture is challenging and hi-tech. Moreover, food production is a national priority. If a country does not maintain its self-sufficieny in food production it will always be a begger, so to speak."

Abudu Reyimu, from the Peoples' Republic of China, is an engineer with an undergraduate degree specializing in irrigation & drainage engineering and a graduate degree in hydraulics. He works in water management planning for the Xinjiang Survey Design and Research Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower in Xinjiang, an autonomous region of China bordering the former USSR where 60% of the population are Uighurs - an ethnic minority of Turkoman origins. Although the region - some 1.6 million square kilometers surrounded and divided by a series of three mountain chains, has limited precipitation, 80% of the 16 million inhabitants are farmers, most on State Farms. In fact, a large part of the region is very arid, part of the world's second largest desert: the Gobi or Taklimakan Desert. At present, the prevailing method of irrigation in State Farms in Xinjiang is flood irrigation, he says, a method that is not only wasteful of a precious commodity, but compacts the soil and often creates drainage problems. Yet beyond first-hand exposure to technologies that he says are very sound, economical on inputs such as saving water and fertilizer, while enhancing yields, one of the deepest impressions from the course, he says, is the entire idea of using the desert for agricultural production such as Israel

has. "It is very encouraging to see how beginning from nothing, Israel has used irrigation in the desert as a source of income. People are the key. If the small Israeli People have achieved this, I think we in China can copy your example," he says optimistically.

Adopting methods used in Israel will require some adaptation, however. For instance, the temperature of the water is extremely cold, coming from mountain sources.

Eppie M. Chipopola, from Zambia, one of the seven women in the course, is a field extension worker with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, in the Lusaka province. She holds a diploma in agriculture from the Natural Resource Development College and a post-graduate diploma in extension work from the University of Reading in the UK. While Zambia would not seem to be a natural for a course in semi-arid and arid agriculture, she is representative of a growing number of countries in geographic locations that have been hit by prolonged drought and therefore seek to learn Israeli irrigation techniques.

"There are about 6,000 families in our area with farms that average 10 hectares, mostly planted in maize, sorghum and groundnuts. Drought, where I work in the Kafue District, began in 1991. There is a river in the district and in the dry season, farmers plant along the stream and water fields with buckets. This, however, has not met the problem of the country as a whole," she stresses. "In the last four years Zambia has been forced to import maize, a staple in the local diet, paying in hard currency. Zambia is not short on water sources," she stresses. "We have four lakes and two main rivers. There is plenty of water. But farmers have always depended on rainfall. Now it is a matter of convincing both the government and the farmers that in the long run, investing hard currency in state-of-the-art irrigation equipment to bring the water to the farmers is worthwhile. To do so will require the government to pump money to small farmers, assist them to purchase drip irrigation, not a simple task, as government policy was recently changed from subsidizing agriculture toward privatization and less government involvement.

"I hope to convince my superiors to fund a pilot project with drip irrigation when I get back, to show what can be done." She adds that one of the eye openers for her was that one can use any water, even sewage and saline water to grow crops rather than spilling it into the streams. While her primary concern is the small farmer, and food production on a national level, in the future Eppie M. Chipopola can envision introduction of greenhouses for export products as a source of foreign exchange, methods that today are limited to a small number of large commercial growers.

Another participant from a country contending with prolonged drought is Saliman Iring, from Papua New Guinea, an extension service agricultural program advisor serving some 87,000 inhabitants, 80% of them farmers, is in a similar quandary: "While areas such as mine that have been hit by drought have water sources, the problem is transporting water from the rivers to the country's small farmers. To introduce irrigation to 70-100 hectare family farms that grow crops such as vegetables and coffee in mountainous terrain will require not only convincing farmers of the value of irrigation, but even more so, convincing decision-makers in government of the value of helping farmers purchase drip irrigation," he says. One must take the long view. At present, hard currency is being lost to import food from Australia. I believe we should investigate investing hard currency in purchasing irrigation technologies as a way to increase local food production and break the vicious cycle," he says.

Wan Soon Kim, from Korea, a government researcher in horticulture in Seoul, heard about the course from his country's embassy in Israel. About to embark on his PhD in floriculture, focusing on hydroponics for cut roses, Kim saw the course as an opportunity to advance his knowledge and do some networking. He is one of a dozen participants in the 1998 course who engage in research or teaching, rather than extension work or regional planning. "Korea has many many hectares of greenhouses. We have sprinkler, mist and drip systems but our experience with drip irrigation has been poor," he admits. "We want to use advanced technologies to increase production. Israelis are advanced in my particular field of research, particularly in water management, including fertigation." Kim stresses the value of professional contacts he has made with Israeli colleagues engaged in research, with whom he hopes to maintain contact while working on his PhD.

Course director Dr. Dov Sitton notes that while participants have a chance to examine the latest state-of-the-art irrigation products, including drippers for hilly terrain that compensate for differences in pressure on an incline, they are also exposed to sprinkler systems based on light-weight aluminum pipes, widely used in many areas of the world. This technique is a quick coupling design that enables sliding 6 and 12 meter-long pipes into one another, end-on-end without threaded couplings: a loose hook mechanism at the end of each pipe locks firmly in place when water under pressure is passed through the pipes.

Dov Sitton and David Mills, co-coordinators of the course, believe graduates can impact agriculture in their respective counties in a host of ways, not only in the way water is viewed and used. While advantages to the economy in terms of self-sufficiency in food production were mentioned by participants, Sitton and Mills add that modern Israeli techniques hold the promise of opening up marginal lands to agricultural production with marginal water in the past considered useless by local planners.

The dynamic nature of the course, which strives throughout to involve course members in doing rather than merely listening, is epitomized by activities during the last week of the two-month course which are devoted to planning and presentation of mini-projects. The student body organizes into two- and three-person teams that present 25 minute lectures to the entire group. The team lectures on projects designed to show application of theoretical or practical material taught in the course in one way it might be employed in the participants' own countries.

For instance, in one of the past course (1997), participants from Bulgaria, Kazakhstan and Hungary joined forces formulating a plan to deal with a common problem, low rainfall in the spring that retards development of newly-germinated oat crops, reducing yields. The solution: a plan to seek frost-resistant varieties and tie them to optimal timing in early sowing, giving the plants a good head-start before relatively dry spring weather sets in. Three Indian participants banded together on a joint mini-project to formulate a program to explore the feasibility of introducing a crop like jojoba to northwestern India based on testing four varieties of jojoba, a plant encountered in the course, in experimental plots using drip irrigation and fertigation with water of various magnitudes of salinity that typify the region.

This year projects are equally innovative - their variety underscoring the multifaceted ways MASHAV's International Course on Crops for Arid and Semiarid Zones, Advanced Agrotechnologies can enhance agriculture and conservation hand-in-hand among participating nations.

David Mills notes that he gains great satisfaction from seeing the crystallization of the group and the friendships created. From correspondence over the years it is clear that while some receive promotions at home because of their efforts and studies, all involved, Israelis and international participants alike, benefit from the learning experience. Mills is responsible for individual training at the institute for the few graduates of this course chosen to stay on to do further research. Look out for an article in a future Shalom Magazine!