Mwanza — Mwanza District Irrigation Officer, Mayamiko Kombi says Mwanza has the potential to expand existing irrigation facilities and establish new and modern irrigation schemes that can guarantee the district's food security.

Kombi said this Tuesday at a preparatory meeting for an irrigation field day scheduled to take place on 15 August, 2013 under the theme 'Irrigation our culture to food surplus and economic generation'.

"We have hilly areas which are suitable for gravity irrigation method and water-canes irrigation is also possible such that we have farmers in areas such as Thambani, Kunenekude and Chodoole who are currently making it through irrigation farming," he said.

He stressed the need not only for expanding irrigation farming to other areas so that it becomes accessible to everyone, but also considering establishing new ones with modern irrigation technologies.

The District Irrigation Officer also said it is high time farmers stopped depending on rain fed agriculture, saying it is not reliable nowadays due to climate change.

He, therefore, encouraged farmers especially those operating at small scale to change their mentality on old farming techniques and adopt newly introduced irrigation technologies, saying there are more profits that a farmer can realize in modern irrigation methods which rain fed agriculture cannot offer. "Rain fed farming gives you a chance to harvest once only per year, but with modern technology you can grow three times in a year thereby yielding more produce and the excess of which you

Project Coordinator of the Evangelical Association of Malawi, Vincent Tholo urged stakeholders in the irrigation sector to work together in improving irrigation farming in the district.

He said: "Irrigation requires resources but no individual entity can claim to have all the required resources. We, therefore, need each sector to pool out its resources in one basket so that as a team we can make our district food secure."

Tholo explained that although the district has a good climatic feature that enables irrigation activities to prevail, other resource constraints are hindering people in the district from enjoying the benefits of irrigation farming.

Government, through the irrigation department, wants to enhance irrigated agricultural production so that it effectively contributes to sustainable economic growth and development of the country and one way of achieving this is through increasing land under sustainable irrigation farming to 200,000 hectares by 2016.