6 June 2011
Maputo — Mozambique’s largest irrigation scheme, at Chokwe in the Limpopo Valley, is expected to produce about 15,000 tonnes of rice in the current agricultural campaign (2010/2011).
According to Monday’s issue of the daily newspaper “Noticias”, farmers have already finished the rice harvest in an area of three thousand hectares.
It was originally planned that seven thousand hectares would be cultivated. However, this was not possible due to a lack of machinery to prepare the fields and the effects of flooding.
The director of the Chokwe district economic activities services, Inacio Mugabe, explained that the excessive rains between December and February resulted in machinery having to work on damp soil which reduced their efficiency and caused breakdowns in the harvesting machinery.
“This once more reinforces the need for better drainage to improve farming and reduce the losses in the productive process”, said Mugabe.
The inability of the authorities to maintain the equipment, along with other problems, including increasing soil salinity, has hit the Chokwe irrigation system.
“Noticias” reported that about 10,000 hectares in Chokwe face serious problems associated with salinization due to poor irrigation and drainage, threatening the entire infrastructure unless preventive measures are taken in the near future.
It is estimated that in the last agricultural season farmers in Chokwe lost more than six thousand tonnes of rice due to a lack of equipment at harvest time.
The machines were late to arrive, and crops were lost due to the onset of the rainy season and a plague of quelea birds.
The Chokwe irrigation scheme covers 33,000 hectares. It is the largest irrigated perimeter in the country, but suffered massive damage in the Limpopo floods of February 2000.
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