Since June 2019, Scene has partnered with three organisations, Farm-Hand, Futurepump, and GADC, to design and deliver REFRUIT– Resource Efficient Farming by Renewable Ugandan Irrigation Technology. Funded through the UK Government’s Innovate UK department for research and innovation, this 18-month agri-tech project sought to address the barriers to irrigation uptake for smallholder farmers in Northern Uganda. Concluding in December 2020, this blog post intends to review the project’s journey, discuss the key outcomes and challenges, and reflect on next steps to take the project to the next level.
The REFRUIT project explored how a solar precision irrigation pump could meet the irrigation needs of smallholder farmers in northern Uganda.
Despite having some of the greatest surface water reserves in the world, less than 0.5% of this potential is utilised in Uganda.
Addressing the increasing urgency for irrigation
Uganda has one of the highest volumes of surface water in the world, due to its dense network of rivers, lakes, and wetlands fed by the river Nile. Despite this, less than 0.5% of the country’s irrigation potential is utilised, with most farmers relying on seasonal rainfall instead. This is a huge lost opportunity, with irrigation able to support significant increases in agricultural productivity and income, particularly for smallholder farmers, who produce the vast majority of the country’s output. The consequences and harms of low irrigation uptake will be further exacerbated by worsening climate change, which is giving rise to more unpredictable and more extreme floods, droughts, and storms throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
The REFRUIT project aimed to address this need for irrigation improvements among smallholder farmers in Uganda by tapping into East Africa’s widespread use of mobile phones, and by combining two unique irrigation technologies to produce one of the world’s first solar-powered precision irrigation solution for small-scale farmers. In addition to technology development, the project also investigated affordable commercial models targeting farmers on low and seasonally-dependent incomes.
A world’s-first solar-powered, remote controlled, and precision irrigation system
The project integrated Futurepump’s portable SF2 solar-powered surface water pump with Farm-Hand’s automated precision irrigation schedules, to deliver the right amount of water to the right crops at the right times at low cost and no fossil fuel input requirements. Through these technologies, REFRUIT offers a unique irrigation solution, tailored towards the local conditions of small-scale farmers with simple irrigation needs and limited access to mobile phone technology.
The project also incorporated pilot farmer feedback to develop a product prototype, aiming to ensure that the benefits of irrigation technology are accessible for every smallholder farmer regardless of farm size or access to finance. This offering will provide unique and low-cost irrigation assessments for farmers, gathering information about each farm and farmer type through a combination of satellite-imaging and mobile phone-based surveys, and will connect each farmer to the necessary technology, finance, and extension services most suited to their situation.
Farm-Hand’s precision irrigation software delivers the right amount of water at the right time, modified according to weather forecasting, crop type, soil composition, and farmer preferences.
During the pilot trials, farmers received irrigation notifications via SMS on their mobile phones, and could respond to pause or change the planned irrigation times.
Designed by, and for, the farmer users
Stakeholder engagement is a key centrepiece of any international development project, essential in ensuring the delivery of outcomes which address users’ needs, capacities, and values. In the case of REFRUIT, four sets of participatory farmer workshops were held throughout the 18-month project, each with differing aims to:
Gather baseline data on traditional irrigation techniques, agricultural practices, harvest seasons, and market conditions before pilot trials began;
Design the technology’s mobile phone SMS user interface and notifications around the language preferences and daily routines of the farmers;
Demonstrate the technology to the farmers, instruct and quiz the farmers on using it, and install systems at pilot farms;
Present the results of the pilot trials to farmers and GADC staff, and gather their feedback in order to inform the project’s culminating business and exploitation plans.
The pilot farmers and staff gathered to reflect and share feedback on the project results in November.
Training the pilot farmers to use and fix the solar pump was essential to ensure long-term project success and farmer capacity.
Encouraging results from pilot trials
The REFRUIT project conducted two pilot trials across eight pilot farms, including two cooperative farmer groups. Monitored by local Uganda partner GADC, these pilots were designed to assess farmer engagement, technology usability, and improvements to crop yield, labour time, and farmer income.
The first set of pilots were held in the dry season between January and May 2020 and allowed pilot farmers to become familiar with manual operation of the solar irrigation pump. The wet season pilot, conducted between May and August 2020, saw the implementation of automatic irrigation scheduling. This required farmers to set up their pumps and specify their crop type and field arrangements to the technology partners. Once in place, farmers received automatic irrigation alerts via SMS in the evening and morning before irrigation events. These irrigation times were created automatically via Farm-Hand, informed by day-ahead local weather-forecasting, and modified for each crop type, growth stage, and soil composition. This ensured minimal and finely-tuned water delivery, improving crop yield while reducing the risks of over-irrigation such as nutrient run-off, soil leaching, and water scarcity.
The results were highly positive, with the automated irrigation pumps delivering a 60% reduction in irrigation-related labour time: from 282 hours’ irrigation time per farmer per season, before the pilots had begun, down to 120 hours at the end of the pilots. Farmer income also improved, with the pilot farmers together generating $220 USD from wet season crop sales, representing around $37 USD per farmer, or 14% of their monthly income, on average. Improved food security was also reported, aided by more the pump’s efficient and reliable irrigation delivery. The project also included basic training in accounting and recording skills, supplying farmers with weighing scales and stationery for more accurate measurement of their farms’ progress over time.
The pilots also found that the two farmer groups involved – known as Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) – proved particularly supportive for sharing the associated finance and labour costs of using the pump. These groups pooled their members’ money to repay the pump costs more quickly than individual farmers, while reducing each farmer’s time involvement by distributing irrigation labour between themselves.
Farmers’ experiences matched these quantitative outcomes too, with almost 90% of farmers preferring to remain using the pumps rather than return to their previous methods of manual irrigation after the pilot trials ended. And, with the income gained from the harvested crops, the farmers made investments into diversifying their farmland, purchasing animals, building secondary businesses, or putting into a savings account.
Transforming challenges into opportunities for future project development
The REFRUIT project team was highly encouraged by the outcomes of the project and are actively investigating opportunities and partnerships to develop further the irrigation technology and business model which was trialled during the pilots.
The development of this next step will be informed by the challenges highlighted during the REFRUIT project pilots. For example, farmers reported that the greatest barrier to using the automated irrigation pump was the lack of reliable mobile phone signal, particularly for more remote pilot farms. Lacking the ability to remotely control their pumps in this way, farmers expressed a keen interest in more detailed information about the irrigation requirements of their crops and soil types. The future-looking REFRUIT Business Plan has incorporated this feedback, and the team is currently in the process of developing a business model and technology offering best suited to address the irrigation particular needs of smallholder farmers in East Africa.
If such an opportunity is of interest to you, or any organisations you may know, then please do get in touch.
Pilot farmers reported improved seasonal food security and generous incomes.