Translation tips

Mohammed Nouri explains the importance of ensuring farmers understand the new technology.

How? You demonstrate.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Flikr

“When I was in the field the first thing i did is explained to farmers how groundwater works, using a container with water in it and a sponge. When I put the sponge into the water it was demonstrating this (container) is the reservoir, this is what is happening under the ground, and the sponge is the soil.

This is the water we can use. But we can’t use all the water we have here, because when you take the sponge out of it, only the water that drops can you take from the groundwater. The water that stays in the sponge we can’t really use it.”

A tip for better communicating with farmers is to provide short information for them to consider.

For example, telling farmers that only 1% of water stays in the plants, and that most of the water goes into the air and the soil is shocking information that helps them think about how and when they bring water to plants.

Key messages:

  • Failure of irrigation schemes should not be assumed to be due to a lack of farmers’ knowledge. Such an assumption would overlook farmers’ experience and engineers’ inability to communicate due to their frequent use of inaccessible, technical terminology.
  • Successful irrigation depends on interaction between engineers and farmers. Engineers and farmers need to learn from one another and collaborate to find more innovation irrigation systems.
  • Effective communication with farmers should provide concise information for them to consider, with visual props and examples.

Suggested further reading:

Acknowledgements:

  • Mohamed Nouri, Assistant Professor, Water Resource Management
  • Louise Sibusiso Nkomo, Project Leader in Water Management, Zimbabwe
  • Miguel Tafula, Irrigation Engineer, Mozambique