A serious farmer should do irrigation. Water solves 50% of your problems

If you ever plan on doing farming, the first thing you should make sure you have is A SOURCE OF WATER. I know some people think that climate change is a myth but ile siku utafanya farming hii Kenya while depending on rain ndio utajua climate change is real, rains ziki fail kidogo tu all your efforts go to waste.

Depending on the size of the farm, you can have as little as the 20-50 litre containers, harvest rain using the 5000/10000 litres tanks or go up to the level of digging a water pan that can hold 500,000 litres and above. If you have money, dig a borehole. Ideally boreholes are the best but truth is not many people can afford to dig one, esp small scale farmers. Plus boreholes cannot be dug anywhere. So, water pans are the next best thing.

A water pan sio tu shimo kwa ground, it should be constructed by a professional who understands the terrain, will know how it will collect rain run-off waters during rainy season and prevent too much evaporation during hot, dry seasons. The professional will also know how many acres a water pan can support, and how long the water should last (for example, a 400,000 cubics water pan, that is 100m wide and 150m in length should last you at least 100 days, or 3 months and will replenished by the rainy seasons). Water pans may seem simple but there is a lot of science that goes behind making them so get a professional to do it, not village KYM. Also issues of fencing it ndio wanyama, kids na village drunks don’t fall and drown.

Great insights.
Water is everything. Soil and climate issues can be taken care of later.
By the way agriTourism is a niche gaining traction.

You been involved?

For your estimation, 1acre crops needs about 10,000 liters of water per day. If you need to to storage factor in evaporation losses, and application efficiencies.

Depends on the type of irrigation( Drip, sprinkler,furrow, basin, flood)and the soil type( loamy, sandy- Ability to retain moisture).

Drip( drop by drop next to the plant) uses less water as compared to all others while flood( mostly used in rice production) uses a lot of wora.

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Climate change is real. I have witnessed it personally. Kuna mhindi flani alipanda ngano na mhindi on 5ooo acres. First and second years ,mvua ikafail, but insurance ikambail out. The third year mvua ikanyesha mingi sana ngano ikachomeka. Unfortunately, the insurance companies have a policy that they cannot bail out a perosn three time consecutively. Last I heard the mhindi had closed shop and was negotiating with one of LootAll’s cronies to buy his assets.

You’re making it seem more complicated than it is. A water pan can be dug anywhere as long as you have a water harvesting plan or at least a feasible strategy to fill it up with water. Just set aside like 100k, hire 10 capable people, and set a minimum target of 5 feet to be dug daily. I would suggest a round pan with a diameter of say 15 feet. You should have a water pan in less than three weeks and enough balance left to cover the top and construct an inlet. It will take time to fill it up depending on your harvesting capabilities, but it will take quite a large piece of farm to drain it. In fact, if the same should be used for domestic purposes, once full, you may as well as say bye-bye to water issues. Invest in water pump while at it.

The ammount of Water needed by crops won’t change, you apply extra to take care of system losses / efficiency and environmental factors; soils, evaporation etc. So using drip doesn’t reduce the ammount needed by the plant, it prevents you from applying a lot extra due to losses

Did he really say that by drip irrigation the plant will require less water? Its clear he meant that by drip, water is applied at the point of use only hence less used.
I sympathise with you