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Dealing with the weather

Mar 17, 2010 Editorial

The report in our Sunday edition, “El Niño wreaks havoc in Region One”, is perhaps a portent of things to come for the rest of us in the coming months, if the extraordinary spell of dry weather persists. The effect on economic activities has been devastating: crops have shrivelled up; gold mining has been curtailed on account of the lack of water to strip and leach the soil and most worrisome, the quality of drinking water from the rivers and creeks has deteriorated to such an extent that diarrhoea is a real and present danger. To ward off the risk, residents are forced to trek for long distances to obtain potable water while the supply lasts.
While in the other regions the results of the drought have not been as dramatic, this is only on account of the relatively more highly developed infrastructure that has been rehabilitated and installed in the last few years. But the effects have been as insidious in their long-term implication. Overall, agriculture still remains the largest employer of our workforce, the largest contributor to our GDP and the platform on which the hope of transforming our economy lies. This is so whether or not we have an ocean of oil sitting off our coast: we should all know by now what a double-edged sword overreliance on such resources can be on a balanced development program.
El Niño has already placed rice and sugar on the back foot. The plans for resuscitating the sugar industry rest squarely on the successful revitalisation of the field operations. In the near term, to raise the production back to its old levels and then beyond, an intensive replanting and planting operation had been launched. But for the cuttings to sprout and grow, water is vital, and its shortage and absence have forced a truncation of the program. Sugar cane is normally reaped within a year and we should expect that the projections made earlier about the production levels in the industry next year will have to be revised downwards, regardless of when the drought ends.
The effect on the rice industry will be felt even earlier because of the much shorter growing period (three and a half months) of the crop. To begin with, a much lesser acreage was planted because of the lack of water in January – the time when water is most needed. For those who were able to get their crop in, the lack of water at crucial intervals in the crop cycle will lead to a fall in the yield per acre and this, of course, will exacerbate the crisis in the industry. Those that had the finances to pump water will be faced with the consequences of increased costs of inputs. Most farmers have very small acreages and can be classified as subsistence farmers.
They do not have the resources and wherewithal to survive if the drought persists.
The greatest hope for agriculture lies in the diversification efforts that the Ministry of Agriculture have been pushing for some years now. As was mentioned in our report on Region One, there are great opportunities in cultivating crops such as turmeric that need much less water than our traditional crops.
In the intensive form of cultivation demanded by these cash crops, we have to begin utilising the techniques of a more direct delivery of water to the roots of the crops rather than the very wasteful open drain methodology that is currently the norm.
Apart from obviously using less water overall, the direct application through PVC pipes with holes denies weeds their lifeblood water, and therefore necessitates less weeding and offers less competition to the crop for nutrients.
Climate change, we all have to accept, is a reality – and we have to deal with that reality. We have to make a virtue out of the necessity forced upon us. For those in the traditional crops, they will have to become more ingenious in their sourcing and utilisation of water. Our overall success, however, will depend on how adept we are in selecting new crops that need less water and delivering that water most efficiently to the roots of the crops.

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