Floods will pose a challenge to FRA in rural areas - Kapita
Floods will pose a challenge to FRA in rural areas - KapitaBy Fridah Zinyama
Saturday June 16, 2007 [04:00]
AGRICULTURE minister Ben Kapita has said the washing away of roads and bridges due to floods will pose a serious challenge to the Food Reserve Agency in its purchasing and collection of maize from rural areas. This year's farming season was marred by heavy rains which washed away most of the roads and bridges in rural areas.
"The Road Development Agency will have to come up with quick solutions to this problem as it will affect this year's marketing season," Kapita said.
He said RDA will have to source funds to erect temporary bridges in order to help with the maize marketing season.
"The washing away of the roads and bridges is a real challenge for us and if nothing is done most of the maize will remain uncollected in the rural areas," Kapita said.
On Thursday, Kapita announced a reduction in total maize production from 1, 424, 439 metric tonnes from last year's farming season to 1, 366, 158 metric tonnes this farming season.
This represented a decrease of about 4.09 percent in comparison to maize production achieved last year.
Labels: FLOODS, FOOD, FRA, RDA
posted by MrK @ 4:30 AM
2 Comments:
A couple of points about flooding...
Usually, floods are caused by
- deforrestation
- building settlements in flood plains
Water is a precious asset, that should be kept on the land as long as possible. There are many ways to do this, but they are mainly,
- reforrestation
- digging swales (shallow ditches), so water has much more time to sink into the soil and contribute to the groundwater level
- keeping the soil soft and permeable, by sowing cover crops, which also add organic matter to the soil while preventing erosion at the same time
- build ponds, so whatever runoff water still exists, is stored for future human, fire fighting or farming use.
Obviously, this would seriously mitigate any effects from droughts as well.
Check out Keyline Design for landscaping that allows water to become asset again, instead of a liability.
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So the real question is: why are there floods? Why are there times of 'too much' water? And why isn't this excess water captured?
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