Phase 2 Milestone 3 Progress Report 2

MILESTONE 3: Progress Report No 2

Lower Olifants catchment

Agricultural Support Initiative

(AgriSI)

Acknowledgements

The USAID: RESILIM-O project is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development under

P O Box 1919

Hoedspruit 1380

Limpopo, South Africa

T 015-7930503

W award.org.za

Company Reg. No. 98/03011/08

Non-profit org. Reg. No. 006 –821

USAID’s Resilience in the Limpopo River Basin (RESILIM) program addresses ongoing degradation in the river

(RESILIM-O)that It is being implemented by the Association for Water and Rural Development (AWARD).

Both projects share the same overall objectives. You can find out more information on the RESILIM projects

on www.usaid.gov website and www.award.org.za.

The USAID’s RESILIM-O focusses on the Olifants catchment. The program aims to reduce the vulnerability of

people and ecosystems inthe Olifants Catchment specifically, by improving how transboundary natural

resources are managed. By understanding the systemic causes of vulnerability, including climate

vulnerability, it is promoting new ways of thinking and acting to promote integrated water and biodiversity

management.

We are working with diverse people and institutions in the water and biodiversity sectors in the Olifants

River Catchment to understand the multiple vulnerabilities tochange, including climate change. Along with

quality scientific contributions, our engagement in the socio-political context of the Olifants River

Catchment allows us begin to begin to institutionalize integrated, resilience-based practices, providing a

foundation for robust development policy and practice in the in this river catchment, and beyond

The Olifants River Catchment falls within the Limpopo River Basin, which is part of an international drainage

basin that stretches across South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana. In fact, the Olifants River

contributes nearly 40% of the waterthat flowsin the Limpopo River making it an important catchment in

As above

AWARD, 2017.

At the heart of this catchment is the Olifants River, a vital artery that flows for 560 kilometres through

South Africa and into Mozambique, where it is known as the Rio dos Elefantes in Mozambique.

This mighty river originates in South Africa’s Mpumalanga Highveld, flowing northwards before curving in an

easterly direction through the Kruger National Park and into Mozambique, finally finding rest in the salty

water of the Indian Ocean near Xai Xai, just north of Maputo.

The main tributaries of theOlifants River are the Wilge, Elands, Ga-Selati, Klein Olifants, Steelpoort, Blyde,

Our catchment is the foundation of our livelihoods and development. Yet the river and associated natural

resources in the Olifants Catchment are under threat.

Unchecked pollution, inappropriate land resource use, weak and poorly enforced policies and regulations

and poor protection of habitats and biodiversity are degrading the Olifants at an alarming rate. What’s more,

the area is however under threat from factorssuch as mining for heavy metals, inappropriate land

management, rural sprawland unsustainable useof natural resources. This affects the levelof goods and

services provided by the ecosystem.

The diverse population groups living in the Olifants Catchment all have one thing in common; they rely on

the river and the catchment’s natural biodiversity for their livelihoods. This reliance can be direct or indirect.

Rural communities rely on it for things such as traditional medicine,grazing and browse, fuel, food and

washing and drinking and use it for recreational and spiritual practices. Subsistence farmers in Mozambique

Project partners

Mahlatini Development Foundation (MDF) isa small public benefit non-profit organization consisting of rural

development practitioners whospecialize in participatory learning and action processes, sustainable natural

resource management and low externalinput farming systems, including a focus on rain water harvesting,

conservation agriculture, intensive homestead food production, food security, climate change adaptation

micro finance and enterprise development.

MDF designs and implements rural developmentprogrammesand training processes providing learning

processes for adults all the way from semi- literatefarmers topost graduate university level. We work in

partnership with government and non-government organisations alike. We are sensitiveto and mainstream

Contents

Sound agro-ecologicalpractices for soil and water conservation (SWC)and theability toself-organise and

Options for expansion:

Way forward:

they continued with further construction. The LF from Sedawa – Christina Thobejane and a learning group

member Magdeline Malepe assisted in these processes.

In total, 18 tunnels were distributed to participants, one has been bought (by Christina Thobejane) and

one is still available for allocation.

The table below indicates the beneficiaries for these tunnels.

R70,00 per household for this. Each groupconsists of around 10 households. Some of our participants get

water for both drinking and watering their gardens from a spring across the main road.

In these group there are a few farmers with bigger plots outside the village; about 4 -6 hectares. Farmers

with big plots either have borehole water or they use water from the mountain to water their vegetables.

In their plots they plant different vegetables and one participant also planted the herbs (parsley,

Pictures above: Obridge Tshetlha uses his field to farm a variety vegetables (sweet potatoes, tomatoes,

spinach, beetroot, cabbage and herbs to sell. He is not working so he depends on this field for a living.

He also joined hands with his family and other farmers, farming close buy, to collect water from the

mountain and share the water in their adjoining fields.

Mr Maphori, farms with his wife and his son

in another field. He has borehole water in

his field. They plant a range of vegetables

Smallholder farmers participating in the AgriSI project love growing tomatoes in their household gardens

as they believe it has good market. Almost all the participants monitored have planted tomatoes.

Depending on the size of tomatoes they sell a bundle of 10-15 tomatoes for R10,00. Tomatoes are a basic

food in their community so they can sell close to 5 bundles a day and there is enough demand for all to be

able to sell. Participants make between R150,00-R400,00/month selling tomatoes in the community.

Mostly they use the traditional furrows for planting tomatoes and are now aware that they would need to

water for both consumption and for watering her garden.

Above: Tomatoes harvested from the small gardens in Sedawa and Mametja ready to sell.

initiatives around water provision for agricultural purposes.

5.1.3.4.1Introduction

Some of the learning group members went

to speak to people in Botshableo who have

done this before (protected a spring in the

The strikes and road blockages in the area

as because of water issues. It appears to be

the only way to get the Municipality to hear us

the municipal borehole pumps are broken;

there are maintenance issues. The municipal

No one has been informed of the impending bulk water supply system, although they have seen the pipes

being laid along the main road and some of the big new reservoirs built on the hills. There is no direct

communication form the municipality. We can only hear news via the radio/ newspapers. The meetings

that do happen are about votes, they are not real things. There is friction as they make promises that they

do not fulfil.

5.1.3.4.2Comments on the screening of the movie

5.1.3.4.3Water walk report back

The village was visited on 21 June 2018 to look at possible sources of

water for vegetable production for about 30 participants of the

adjacent mountain and we walked with them the up the valley over

the water shed to the other side of the mountain. We started walking

at about 07:30 and returned at about 18:00. The distance that we

walked was 6.4 km one way and the elevation about 790m. The

villagers suggested that a pipe be installed from the river on the other

side of the ridge around the mountain. This may be possible although

the terrain is likely to be very difficult. The estimated distance would

be more than 12km and to install a gravity pipe with a constant

gradient would be very problematic. The height difference of about

600m is also very challenging as the excess pressure would need to be

nullified with the use of several reservoirs along the pipeline.

complication that the water would need to be pumped.

The amount of water is also not much and the flow rate at the time of

It is therefore recommended that a much more cost effective and

practical option be considered. In my opinion a borehole would be a

far better solution to develop a water source. It would need to be

managed in such a way that it is sustainable and equitable. These

problems could be overcome with clear definition of roles and responsibilities based on sound management and

maintenance.

Summary: the spring as it is now supplies around 10 000l/hr, which is not very strong. The distance the

pipe would need to go is 12 km (around the mountain) and the spring is 800m higher than the village. This

provides too much pressure for a pipe and “breaker” tanks and pressure release valves would need to be

Dipua Thobejane is the Muaruleng Mayor –he can be approached

Issues of continuity of production may as yet mean that these high figures can not be maintained every

month, but thus far the process is working well.

For the first order, we only delivered

herbs, as we did not yet know

whether there was a market for the

vegetables. Farmers came together to

work on the first orders, learning how

to wash, weigh and pack herbs, so

that they could continue with that

We also worked on quality of the

For the second week, some vegetable orders were included (spinach and onions). We accompanied Nelson

to do deliveries of orders in Hoedspruit. He was introducing Christina to the clients. We made the first

stop at Fig & Bin and they were very happy to see such high-quality vegetables. They ordered spinach and

of an ongoing process. MDF had suggested one

price set for the entire season, but Hoedspruit

Hub have been working more closely with

actual prices attainable. This means that

bundles. Farmers, of course were happy toearn more. They may however not be so happy when prices drop

Hoedspruit Hub, by Nelson, Betty and Christina. She is the coordinator at village level; farmers bring their

washed and packed herbs to her (Sedawa, Botshableo and Turkey). She travels by taxi to Hoedspruit hub to

deliver the produce to Nelson, who inspects and counts it and then pays cash forthe produce. MDF generates

in invoice for those payments at that time. Christina then distributes the monies to each farmer on her

return home. This system is working well at the moment, although we are aware that there is not enough

of apaper trail. Each farmer is not aware of what they will receive until they are given the cash and this

means that opportunities for money going missing are being created. At the moment we are working on a

system of management and control that would be appropriate.

Lack of water for agricultural activities continues to be a major problem, despite efforts to work within

workshops organised around cropping calendars and seed saving were unattended. They have also not

responded to invitations to join the review workshops, cross visits or training offered through Hoedspruit

Hub. In Fenale, the practice of having meetings on Saturdays has been re-instated and attendance there is

regular, albeit a small group of participants (6-9)

Participation in the other 5 villages is good and new members are brought on board on a reasonably

continuous basis.

Garden monitoring is conducted on an ongoing basis, now using an e-survey loaded on Pendragon. A point is

made to include different participants for every milestone cycle. Originally the idea was to do the

monitoring for each participant at least once per season (3-4 months) to be able to track how individuals

for these participants in the last year and to provide some closure for this activity.

Farmer experimentation shows a high level of uptake (76%). The small table below shows the experiments

undertaken by these participants. In all cases participants have experimented with different bed designs

that could maximise production and efficient use of scarce water resources. Trench beds are by far the most

popular option. Here participants have made an average of 3 trench beds each for the 21participants where

monitoring was conducted.A few participants now have as many as 10 trench beds, indicating their level of

commitment to this practice.

Implementation of natural pest and disease control has lagged behind a bit. Participants use ash, aloes and

cropping. Most participants stated here that they have not hadpest problems ad have thus not needed to

try out the options introduced. In addition, they prefer to use what they have at hand, rather than having

to buy or acquire the ingredients for the recipes (e.g. soap, paraffin, chillies and garlic).

Use of greywater is also not as common as would be expected. Participants still believe that they cannot

use greywater on crops and have not taken on the use of tower gardens and bucket filters for themselves.

The participants who use greywater (55% - see Figure 13 below), use ash toclean the water and prefer to

use this water on perennial plants and fruit trees. It is becoming apparent that innovations that require

‘outside’ resources, such as shade cloth, buckets, gravel etc are not being implemented by the participants.

harvesting, eating and selling “new” vegetable varieties introduced through the AgriSI, including kale,

of food produced as well as continuity of food production. For the latter, participants are still struggling a

has been reported upon separately, (14 of the 29 participants interviewed here are growing herbs) (Section

tomatoes, as well as bunches of spinach and Chinese cabbage. These participants produce in larger fields.

The percentage of participants saving seed is around 55%. This is significantly higher thanthe percentage

of participants who saved seed in the corresponding period last year, which was around 25%, for the 38

participants for whom monitoring wasdone in July-August 2017. This could potentially be due to the

The most significant innovation for Matibela, is that she has tried to extend her tunnel.

Lydia works as a home- based carer in her community. She produces vegetables for household use and sells

surplus. She also practices mulching and uses liquid manure to control pests and diseases in her garden. She

of less than200 mm (now concentrated in a few months) growing anything without supplementaryirrigation

is almost impossible in the area. Possible sources of water for irrigation include, municipal water (water

with fields in proximity toastream do not have water licenses or permits to abstract water from thestreams

change in soil moisture content. For the latter Chameleon sensors have been installed to assist the farmers

to understand the available water in their soil and irrigate in a way that ensures good water availability.

Where ETc isthe actual evapotranspiration, Kc is the crop coefficient and ET0is the reference

evapotranspiration.

These “simpler” equationswere used for calculation of the WP for the field cropping (CA) and gardening

There are a number of aims for this experiment:

compared to traditional practices (gardening on ridges). Use of other technologies, for example drip

observations have been used as the basis for this experimentation process.

We have taken into account the inputcost and we are looking at adoption of CSA practices from a cost

benefit point of view.

Comparing the farmer method of calculating WP with the “simple” method outlined above

According to the farmers all water applied in garden goes into producing the yield. They argued that because

to production of yield. Therefore, in determining WP we considered runoff, deep percolation and soil

from Equation 2 above, the water use becomes the water applied instead water transpired by the crop.

Results

The WP calculations were done for the simple scientific and farmer versions of the equation; using actual

evapotranspiration and water applied respectively as the water use value.

The small table below outlines the results for those few farmer- led experiments where enough data could

be collected.

*This amount was estimated by Christina as she did not fully harvest this bed, discontinuing it mid-season as it needed too much water, in her estimation

applied method that the farmers prefer. The WP results between the twomethods are not directly

comparable.

It can be seen that the two methods of calculating WP have provided the following information:

proxy or visual indicator for water productivity. More farmer led experiments will be conducted comparing

these WP indicators.

Generally, it is expected that the WP from the same practices (e,g trench beds in tunnels) should have less

variability, but the results have shown otherwise. In afarmers’ experimentation setup, some extra variables

are often introduced during the processand are sometimes unavoidable. For results to be comparable

attention needstobe given to those variables. It isa scientifically frustrating process, but one that provides

for ample learning opportunities in such an adaptive research process such as this.

A cost benefit analysis of WP

In these villages farmers pay for their water; either for transport of 210l drums to their homes (bought from

applied and weighed each bundle of spinach she sold. Shesold a total of 30 bundles of spinach at R10-00

each and made R300 fromthis in one season. She applied a total of 1100l of water as irrigation (100 litres

per week for 11 weeks). In a deep trench bed of 3.5 m2 in size outside the tunnel she planted spinach and

she applied 266 l/ week of water for 11 weeks which makes a total of 2926 litres (13.9 * 210 l) at a cost of

R35-00 per litre she would have paid R487.7 for water applied. She was able sell 15 bunches of spinach at

amount ofwater required in a deep trench under shade cloth. The quantities of spinach produced in the

tunnel are much higher than those produced outside the tunnel. The cost-benefit analysis above indicates,

She tried the same thing with the traditional gardening system (planting on ridges) but she realized she was

using too much water and she then abandoned the bed and focused on the two trench beds.

Chameleons measure soil water content, work similarly to tensiometers and provide readings using colour

sensors have been installed at Christina Thobejane (Sedawa), Mariam Malephe (Botshabelo and Norah

Mahlaku (Mametja), for their gardening experiments. The intention is to provide the farmers with an

irrigation management tool to help themdecidewhen and how much to irrigate. As the readings are

uploaded onto the Virtual Irrigation Academy website, they also provide an analytical tool for the research

Christina has a small petrol water pump and used to pump water up from the Maphere River (approximately

50m downhill from her homestead) for her gardening activities. That streambed however dried up

completely about a year ago. She also has a 5000l Jo-Jo tank for roof rainwater harvesting and last year

LF to have a borehole installed in her yard and she has a pipe linked into the municipal supply system, for

the unlikely moments that there is some municipal water supply. She now pumps water from her borehole

learning workshops, she wasnot convinced until she

managed to work it out for herself.

water in the soil) for longer than in the other beds.

checking the colour.

Christina managed to harvest the spinach worth R 300 using 1100

takes too long toirrigate.However, she hassaid her preferred

water and saves space) She made the decisions about the tower

garden based on her visual observation. This highlights the importance of identifying and developing visual

Christina felt that all the weighing and recording of water

applied was time consuming and unnecessary, since she could

nearby chameleons.

This figure above indicates Christina’s irrigation scheduling for her traditional bed outside the tunnel. Here

Irrigation Case study: Nora Mahlako

of people and isoverloaded tomake provisions for other activities (e.g. farming) on top of water for

household consumption. In the time that Nora had planted the municipal water was cut for several weeks

and she did not have water for irrigation. She then prioritized the spinach in the tunnel and abandoned the

Regarding irrigation, she continued with businessas usual (watering small amounts in the mornings and

Maraim’s beans planted in a trench bed inside the tunnel, a mulched trench bed outside the tunnel and in