THE IMPACT OF IRRIGATION ON AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT

Agriculture has been identified as a critical component in successful attainment of the millennium development goals by all nations. This is because all the goals have links with agriculture.
But the current global food crisis and the upward trend in global food prices in the last quarter of this decade makes it a dream in Africa. African continent have all it takes to combat poverty and food insecurity in the environment.

The land is blessed with human and natural resources and vast agricultural potential. It has 23% of the world’s land of which less than 25% is cultivable and not more that 5% is irrigated. Food and agricultural organization estimated 9.5 million hectares of African land to be under irrigation. At least 65% of the economically active population of Africa is currently engaged in agriculture. Yet, hunger and poverty are ravaging the land and militating against the dream of achieving the millennium development goals. Nigeria has one of the best agro ecology to grow variety of crops.

The country is endowed with environment characterised by fair to good soil. Nigeria’s cultivable land has been estimated to about 71.2 million hectares but less than 50% is put to use due to water constraint. According to a research which shows the estimated area planted and output between 2004 and 2007. The output per hectares has been reducing due to erratic rainfall distribution and lack of access to farm inputs among other factors. With 77% of her population engaged in agricultural activities, yet the nation is facing food crisis. The situation is so critical that the nation has become a food deficit country.

However, modern irrigation technology has offered the population to cultivate more land all the year round, maximum food productivity, remove hunger from our society, reduce poverty and translate the dream of attain the millennium development goals to reality. Irrigation allows primary producers to grow more pastures and crops, to have flexibility in their systems as the ability to access water at any times when it would be otherwise hard to achieve good, and high yield  plant growth, to produce high quality crops, to lengthen the growing season, to have insurance against seasonal variability and drought, to stock more animals per hectare and practice tighter gazing management, to maximise benefit of fertilizer application, to use areas that would otherwise be less productive, to take advantage of market incentives for unseasonal production, to have less reliance on supplementary feeding in grazing operation due to more consistent supply and quality of pastures grown, to improve capital value of property, and also to save cost and obtain greater return. Otherwise, irrigation can also lead to flooding in some area where water is available all year round, poorly designed irrigation without drainage increases the salinity of the soil.

Increased supplies of irrigation water have been instrumental in feeding the population of developed countries, irrigation water has increased food security and standard of living, provided employment opportunities and income, promoted agricultural stabilization, benefitted the environment by reducing deforestation. In conclusion, irrigation has played a pivotal role in agricultural development, the statistics has shown that the need to produce more food will depend on a large extent of enlarging the area under irrigation and rehabilitating or improving the existing ones generally in the world as a whole.