Food for All - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 91

But perhaps more importantly:
People have also started to question the nature of democratic participation. They have
also started to challenge the political systems - those who are in power or control
power have little incentive to allow participatory institutions to develop. Yet in our
villages, people are voicing their concerns, have overruled elites, and have even elected
women as Sarpanchs, local leaders.
In sub-Saharan Africa, water harvesting is also turning barren lands green.
Again, the technologies are not complex and costly, and can be used in
even the poorest of communities. In central Burkina Faso, 100,000
hectares of abandoned and degraded lands have been restored with the
adoption of tassas and zaï . These are 20- to 30-centimetre holes dug in
soils that have been sealed by a surface layer hardened by wind and water
erosion. The holes are filled with manure to promote termite activity and
to enhance infiltration. When it rains, water is channelled by simple stone
bunds to the holes, which fill with water, and into which are planted millet
or sorghum seeds. Normally, cereal yields in these regions are precariously
low, rarely exceeding 300 kilogrammes per hectare. Yet, these lands now
produce 700 to 1000 kilogrammes per hectare. Chris Reij of the Free
University in Amsterdam found that the average family in Burkina Faso
who used these technologies had shifted from being in annual cereal deficit
amounting nearly to 650 kilogrammes, equivalent to six and a half months
of food shortage, to producing a surplus of 150 kilogrammes a year. Tassas
are best suited to landholdings where family labour is available, or where
farm labour can be hired. The soil and water conservation methods have
led to a market for young day labourers who, rather than migrate, now
earn money by building these structures. 21
Good organization helps to improve irrigated agriculture, too. Despite
great investment, many irrigation systems have become inefficient and
subject to persistent conflict. Irrigation engineers assume that they know
best how to distribute water, yet can never know enough about the specific
conditions and needs of large numbers of farmers. Recent years, though,
have seen the spread of a very simple idea - help organize farmers into
water users' groups, and let them manage the water distribution for
themselves. One of the best examples comes from the Gal Oya region in
Sri Lanka. Before this approach, Gal Oya was the largest and most run-
down scheme in the country. Now, farmers' groups manage water for
26,000 hectares of rice fields, and produce more rice crops per year and
per unit of water. Moreover, when farmers took control, the number of
complaints received by the irrigation department about water distribution
fell to nearly zero.