Morocco Banks on Drip Irrigation System to Save Water

Morocco banks on drip irrigation system to save water

RABAT, July 10 (Xinhua) — The Moroccan government has launched a program of generalizing the drip irrigation system to save water and increase the irrigated lands to 700,000 hectares, or 50 percent, local MAP news agency reported Thursday.

The north African kingdom is planning to slash the yearly demand of water by about 1 billion cubic meters, MAP said, quoting Water and Environment State Secretary Abdelkebir Zahoud as saying.

The program is also expected to improve the income of farmers, as the government is raising its subsidies to drip irrigation systems by 40 to 60 percent.

Morocco, most of which is arid desert, relies to a large extent on rainfalls to supply water resource. The long, oft-repeated drought years have severely reduced the resource, and the lack of technology hampers exploiting the existing one.

Only 19 billion cubic meters of surface waters out of an estimate of 29 billion cubic meters is exploited, according to official figures.

The country also enjoys about 4 billion cubic meters of underground water, but the high mineralization rate makes more than half of it unusable.

The government has also launched several campaigns to fight water waste, and set up means to divert the waters, which would otherwise flow into the sea, to zones suffering droughts.

(c) 2008 Xinhua News Agency – CEIS. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.