Adapting to Climate Change: A Long Walk with Uboma Rice Farmers
Project
description:
Increasing
changes in rainfall patterns as a result of climate change are already threatening
local rice cultivation; 
it is difficult to plough rice fields after the first rain in Uboma. The resulting harvest shrinkage and diminishing income
is further exacerbated by endemic water mismanagement and inappropriate land use by farmers, which has led
to massive soil erosion and loss of the soil’s productive capacity.
Also, limited
potential for dry season rice cultivation through soil and water conservation, and
the non-employment of rain water harvesting technologies have continued to
widen the increasing demand-supply gap for rice. The consequence is threatened
food security and livelihood for hundreds of local rice farmers and people in Uboma
and other parts of Nigeria that hitherto had rice supplies from these farms.
The project aims to substantially boost rice
harvests and raise the income of local rice farmers in Uboma, Nigeria. This will happen through the use of televised
instruction and on-the farm adaptive practices to build the capacity of the
farmers on structural and management measures.
These practices will enable them to conserves water, control soil
degradation and enhance productivity in the field. Effectively, the farmers will learn practices
to adapt to changes in rainfall
patterns as a result of climate change.
By facilitating improved on-farm water
management, we seek to enable rice farmers to make multiple harvests 
in one
year. About
100 diversion and infiltration ditches vital for all year round on-farm water
supplies will be constructed, boosting production and income by 50% for the
farmers within the project’s duration. The project will work over a total duration of
18 months, supporting about 500 rice farmers to undertake integrated watershed
development based on rainwater harvesting for the regeneration and sustainable
management of the rain-fed low land rice farms. These will be leveraged by developing a supply chain model that blends the use
of improved technologies, farmer capacity building with commercial linkages to
credible market outlets such as processing mill.
Farmers in Uboma have been cultivating about 8,000
hectares of land through rain fed agriculture in the last several years, but
the situation has deteriorated to less than 2,000 hectares following massive
onslaught of climate change events. We aim to achieve at least a 5% reversal
within the project cycle, bringing back
an extra 400 hectares to full cultivation.
Total Project Amount being solicited: US$254,000 CONTRIBUTE NOW!
