2013 08 Creative Things Thursday Features

Water harvesting is described as redirection as well as productive usage of rainfall which involves wide varieties of methods in collecting water for every rainfall. Most of the water harvesting structures as well as systems are also specific to eco-regions and culture to which it’s been developed. This might involve the collection of water from rooftops, rivers during the monsoon season and swollen streams. Sometimes, it can be built in form of artificial catchments.

With this, it guarantees that farmers will be able to have decent amount of water that is stored in times of limited rainfall or even drought.

Global Effort for Effective Farming

For instance in Ecuador, there is a local NGO group called EkoRural that is also a member of global partnership organization Groundswell International. They are working in degraded and fragile mountain ecosystem where global warming is significantly altering patterns of rainfall as well as the availability of groundwater.

By performing action-based research, EkoRural is working with households in rural areas in an effort to develop new ways of harvesting water to be able to boost on-farm food security and sustainable production.

Helping Farmers to Survive

Muonde Trust on the other hand consists of huge teams of researchers as well as community extension agents who are supporting locally-driven agricultural, community extension and education programs in Zimbabwe. One of their major projects include a farmer-to-farmer networking as well as training in spreading proven water harvesting, micro-irrigation, permaculture techniques and catchment management in drought-affected regions.