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Misanet.com / IPS, 23 March - Land improvements in the Niger River valley in the west and the Komadougou River valley in the east have provided farmers in the poor Sahelian country Niger with many more hectares of arable land. The improvements are a project of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). IFAD's goal is to provide local people with enough productive land to make them self-sufficient. "Our goal is to give people the means to feed themselves. Water, one of the elements necessary to meet this goal, is readily available. It's the fertile land that's scarce," said Ibrahim Mamane, the director of IFAD's Special National Programme (SNP) for Niger. IFAD's SNP project, which began in 1998, consists of rehabilitating and consolidating collectively-owned areas that had been previously improved. Of the 12 improved areas along the Niger River, four, totalling 80 hectares, were internally restructured. Dykes were built along seven kilometres of river frontage to protect three other areas, totalling 70 hectares, from floods. During the period 1999-2000, 176 hectares, out of total of 300 potentially irrigable hectares, were farmed. One thousand, six hundred fifty-one people worked the land, 62 percent of them women. The crops produced are varied. There are the traditional rice and legumes, but now there are cash crops too, such as onions, tobacco, and chile peppers. "Before the project came, we only produced rice, and we had to buy our condiments and vegetables elsewhere," says Elhadji Kangaye Moumouni, a farmer. "But today, we produce everything we need, and even earn some money from selling tobacco." In addition to cash crops, the project is also trying to make kitchen vegetables more popular by providing specially selected eggplant, lettuce, carrot and cabbage seeds. To further improve nutrition among locals, SNP-IFAD has introduced tubers such as sweet potatoes and cassava to the panoply of available seeds. The project's director explains that one of his goals is to promote a more varied diet among people who are used to eating mainly rice. During the year 2000, SNP-IFAD was able to rehabilitate 16 collectively-owned areas in the Komadougou valley, which now grow rice, wheat, barley, and peppers. The project also improved and stocked two ponds. According to Mamane, they are trying to promote the eating of fish among local Komadougou residents. "We're trying to raise awareness among subsistence farmers and get them to change their normal eating habits, especially in regard to fish, which is high in protein." Part of this educational campaign is driven by the fact that local fishermen have to export their smoked fish to neighbouring Nigeria, since there is no local market at all. SNP-IFAD has made sure that their work is environmentally sound. They have reafforested the land by planting a total of 27,059 woodland plants to create a six-kilometre-long living fence, as well as a four-kilometre windbreak. They also replanted four dunes in the Komadougou area that were eroding into desert. Training is also an important SNP function. Small-scale irrigation techniques are taught to the farmers, as well as how to maintain and care for the pumps. Sixteen people have received training on repairing broken pumps. - Before the pump repair people were trained, when any of our pumps broke down, it was sometimes impossible to water crops for several days, since they had to be taken to specialists in Nigeria. This created enormous losses because some crops cannot tolerate a lack of water, says Malam Issa, the head of the co-operative in the village of Mamauri on the banks of the Komadougou. The project also provides management training. It shows co-operative and women's group members how to use management tools such as receipts, cashbooks, inventory control slips, and savings and credit accounts. In spite of the enormous successes of the programme, there were also some failures. A notable lack was that there was no training in long-term food conservation and preparation techniques. "Sometimes, we harvest too much to eat or sell. That means we lose a lot of our produce," says farmer Zalika Kimba. Project officials are aware of this problem and are trying to correct it. According to the director, canning programmes will begin next May, because producing more food is pointless if the surplus goes to waste. Mamane said that traditional processes in preparing and conserving foods will get first priority, in order to avoid costly techniques which require energy-guzzling machines whose spare parts are difficult to find locally. Another complaint voiced was that various aspects of the programme have been suspended several times due to financial problems. "Last year, we were not able to begin growing peppers on time because we lacked the necessary soil additives. So the people in our area lost some earnings," explained Kiari Moustapha, a farmer in the Komadougou area. Responding to these concerns, the director of the SNP-IFAD indicated the project did have some financial problems when fund disbursements were suspended. "In 1999, disbursements were suspended because Niger failed to pay its share of project financing. That led us to put several aspects of the project on hold," Mamane explained. However, he says that these problems are now over and that the government is now paid up. "We've just sent out invitations to bid for some construction work in the areas. Our complete programme will start up again very soon," the SNP-IFAD director promised. By Saidou Arji, IPS
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