Water and Resource Management Authority (WARMA) in Kiambu County has advised farmers to use irrigation methods that efficiently control water use to conserve and preserve water sources.
Speaking on Monday in his office, the company engineer, Joseph Mutunga said irrigation in Kenya was used as one of the ways to boost agricultural productivity in the country and it should be embraced by all stakeholders.
The officer said there are several irrigation methods some of which end up being a hindrance to water sources, yet these natural features need to be nurtured well for them to serve their purposes without much of human interference.
One of the methods the officer recommended was drip irrigation, which he said served as a good way of conserving water, since the water was applied to each plant through one or more emitters.
He said that the areas with high temperatures were more suitable for drip irrigation and farmers who had limited resources of water would benefit.
Mutunga urged farmers to try and integrate the method in their farming techniques, saying it was accurate and ensured application of water.
New technologies have also come up like mobile irrigation system (MIS) which he said used a pressure mechanism system to irrigate.
He explained that MIS watered the plant root zone area only thus saving a lot of water.
“Such systems are what we recommend to farmers to incorporate in their farms,” he said.
He added: “The technology which is similar to drip irrigation has technological advantage over other systems in water use efficiency and crop production as water is not wasted during the irrigating process. This is why we urge farmers to take up new methods and conserve water resources.”
According to the engineer, methods such as flood irrigation where water was pumped from a river to farms end up misusing the water resources since the water may just flow uncontrollably thus hampering the river flow.