What Is Somalia's Agricultural & Water Capacity Prospects?

[Helios]

PART I

I was curious after skimming an old thread about the capability for food self sufficiency and how currently it isn't achievable due to the country's large population boom. What % sufficiency could Somalia feasibly achieve & what is the maximum sufficiency % that Somalia could potentially reach given the quality and amount of arable land available to us.

Somalia - Arable Land (% Of Land Area) - 1961-2016 Data | 2020 Forecast

Arable land (% of land area) in Somalia was reported at 1.7534 % in 2016, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Somalia - Arable land (% of land area) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced...

tradingeconomics.com

.

PART II

I haven't seen this discussed as often as agriculture, but water infrastructure is crucial especially in an arid nation like ours and I honestly don't know much about it. How is our ground water situation looking?

As for Desalination, what is achievable in Somalia?

Here's the energy cost.

Water Source*	Total Dissolved Solids (mg/L)	Minimum Energy for Separation (kwh/m3)**
Seawater	15,000–50,000	0.67
Brackish water	1,500–15,000	0.17
River water	500–3,000	0.04
Pure water	< 500	< 0.01
Wastewater (untreated domestic)	250–1,000	0.01
Wastewater (treated domestic)	500–700	0.01

Water Desalination: History, Advances, and Challenges - Manish Kumar, Tyler Culp, and Yuexiao Shen | Frontiers of Engineering: Reports on Leading-Edge Engineering from the 2016 Symposium | The National Academies Press

Read chapter Water Desalination: History, Advances, and Challenges - Manish Kumar, Tyler Culp, and Yuexiao Shen: This volume presents papers on the topics...

www.nap.edu

Distillation method

FIGURE 1 Typical equivalent (specific) electrical power consumption for thermal and membrane distillation strategies (based on data from Al-Karaghouli and Kazmerski 2013). BWRO = brackish water reverse osmosis; MED = multiple-effect distillation; MSF = multistage flash distillation; MVC = mechanical vapor compression; SWRO = seawater reverse osmosis.

How much does basic desalination/well drilling cost? Which is more reliable for us and a good first step to take.

We have the longest coastline in mainland Africa but are rockier coasts conducive/suitable for saltwater desalination infrastructure?

@RasCanjero @Thegoodshepherd @Apophis @Removed @sincity @GBTarmy @angelplan @kickz @embarassing

 

[Marsh]

I watched a video about how somalia could easily become food self sufficient using more advanced farming let me try to find it.

 

[Mr.Haggis]

Somalia is supposed to be a self sufficient country.

 

[Ras]

PART I

I was curious after skimming an old thread about the capability for food self sufficiency and how currently it isn't achievable due to the country's large population boom. What % sufficiency could Somalia feasibly achieve & what is the maximum sufficiency % that Somalia could potentially reach given the quality and amount of arable land available to us.

View attachment 127120

Somalia - Arable Land (% Of Land Area) - 1961-2016 Data | 2020 Forecast

Arable land (% of land area) in Somalia was reported at 1.7534 % in 2016, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Somalia - Arable land (% of land area) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced...

tradingeconomics.com

.
View attachment 127122

View attachment 127123


PART II

I haven't seen this discussed as often as agriculture, but water infrastructure is crucial especially in an arid nation like ours and I honestly don't know much about it. How is our ground water situation looking?


View attachment 127131
View attachment 127130

As for Desalination, what is achievable in Somalia?

Here's the energy cost.

Water Source*	Total Dissolved Solids (mg/L)	Minimum Energy for Separation (kwh/m3)**
Seawater	15,000–50,000	0.67
Brackish water	1,500–15,000	0.17
River water	500–3,000	0.04
Pure water	< 500	< 0.01
Wastewater (untreated domestic)	250–1,000	0.01
Wastewater (treated domestic)	500–700	0.01

Water Desalination: History, Advances, and Challenges - Manish Kumar, Tyler Culp, and Yuexiao Shen | Frontiers of Engineering: Reports on Leading-Edge Engineering from the 2016 Symposium | The National Academies Press

Read chapter Water Desalination: History, Advances, and Challenges - Manish Kumar, Tyler Culp, and Yuexiao Shen: This volume presents papers on the topics...

www.nap.edu

Distillation method

How much does basic desalination/well drilling cost? Which is more reliable for us and a good first step to take.

We have the longest coastline in mainland Africa but are rockier coasts conducive/suitable for saltwater desalination infrastructure?


View attachment 127125

@RasCanjero @Thegoodshepherd @Apophis @Removed @sincity @GBTarmy @angelplan @kickz @embarassing

We have a couple options for water:


Surface water resources

There isn't much data about rainfall and surface water resources in the north but it might be quite a bit.

In regards to the south:

Juba river has a discharge of around 180 cubic meters per second.

Shabelle has around 75 m^3/s although it's intermittent and usually doesn't reach the coast unless there's some high rainfall. Even then; most of it gets wasted through flooding or dries out due to multiple reasons.


If you add up Juba's river total volume that reaches Luuq throughout the year you get around 5.5 billion cubic meters.

If we used 100% of that to irrigate farm land near the river you would have enough for 500,000 hectares ... Assuming 100% efficiency and no evaporation.

Let's say you get a yield of around 5 tons of wheat per hectare that's around 2.5m tons and that should feed around 2.5 million people.


Shabelle river has a lot less water so let's say it provides a third of the water accessible by the Juba river which should irrigate enough land to feed 800,000 people.

Altogether that's barely 3.5 million out of 15+ million in Somalia.

We definitely won't be using 100% of the water flow of both rivers and there's definitely going to be wastage for multiple reasons like evaporation and flooding.

Would be great if we could use a fraction of that water volume. 40% would be highly optimistic.

It's a way to start though.


Rainfed Agriculture

Here's the hope but also the depressing part.

Some parts of the north and a big chunk of the south do have fairly decent precipitation:

Unfortunately our climate has wild swings and we could go months without rainfall without a warning.

That would make rainfed agriculture untenable since you could lose all your wealth instantly.

You could use some government funded insurance to cover this but men make plans but God has the last word.

Have a far fetched idea that could solve this though:

Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about so just humor me.

There's the option of mobilizing nationwide volunteers and the government to create a rainfall collection project where we build huge reservoirs to balance the supply of water.

How do we collect the rainfall?

By creating tens of thousands of mini canals (ditches) that pulls rainfall into diversion channels using gravity to send it to a lower elevation and then feed it into the two main rivers or a reservoir.

Works just like gutter.

The region where we get the most rainfall you have some of the most flat land with a sloping elevation towards the coast.

The ditches would not even need to be that expensive to build if we make clever use of the existing geology.

Let's say we pick a 100,000 square kilometers area that gets around 500 mm of rain per year.

That's around 50 billion cubic meters!

If were able to make use of 10% of that we could feed another 2/3 million people and 10x that number if we used expensive greenhouses like in Spain.

Not only should this provide us with more water for irrigation but could possibly turn that whole area green if there's suddenly thousands of canals crisscrossing the region.

Hopefully that should help improve the soil over time and this will lead to more fertile soil, higher yields and gradually....more rainfall.

 

[GBTarmy]

Nice interesting thread, Somalia has the potential to feed itself but also export food, most of the cultivated land is located in the shabelle river thanks to the Italians and barre gov that continued the Banana republic, sadly jubba river is not as developed.

We have a couple options for water:


Surface water resources

There isn't much data about rainfall and surface water resources in the north but it might be quite a bit.

In regards to the south:

Juba river has a discharge of around 180 cubic meters per second.

Shabelle has around 75 m^3/s although it's intermittent and usually doesn't reach the coast unless there's some high rainfall. Even then; most of it gets wasted through flooding or dries out due to multiple reasons.


If you add up Juba's river total volume that reaches Luuq throughout the year you get around 5.5 billion cubic meters.

If we used 100% of that to irrigate farm land near the river you would have enough for 500,000 hectares ... Assuming 100% efficiency and no evaporation.

Let's say you get a yield of around 5 tons of wheat per hectare that's around 2.5m tons and that should feed around 2.5 million people.


Shabelle river has a lot less water so let's say it provides a third of the water accessible by the Juba river which should irrigate enough land to feed 800,000 people.

Altogether that's barely 3.5 million out of 15+ million in Somalia.

We definitely won't be using 100% of the water flow of both rivers and there's definitely going to be wastage for multiple reasons like evaporation and flooding.

Would be great if we could use a fraction of that water volume. 40% would be highly optimistic.

It's a way to start though.


Rainfed Agriculture

Here's the hope but also the depressing part.

Some parts of the north and a big chunk of the south do have fairly decent precipitation:

Unfortunately our climate has wild swings and we could go months without rainfall without a warning.

That would make rainfed agriculture untenable since you could lose all your wealth instantly.

You could use some government funded insurance to cover this but men make plans but God has the last word.

Have a far fetched idea that could solve this though:

Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about so just humor me.

There's the option of mobilizing nationwide volunteers and the government to create a rainfall collection project where we build huge reservoirs to balance the supply of water.

How do we collect the rainfall?

By creating tens of thousands of mini canals (ditches) that pulls rainfall into diversion channels using gravity to send it to a lower elevation and then feed it into the two main rivers or a reservoir.

Works just like gutter.

The region where we get the most rainfall you have some of the most flat land with a sloping elevation towards the coast.

The ditches would not even need to be that expensive to build if we make clever use of the existing geology.

Let's say we pick a 100,000 square kilometers area that gets around 500 mm of rain per year.

That's around 50 billion cubic meters!

If were able to make use of 10% of that we could feed another 2/3 million people and 10x that number if we used expensive greenhouses like in Spain.

Not only should this provide us with more water for irrigation but could possibly turn that whole area green if there's suddenly thousands of canals crisscrossing the region.

Hopefully that should help improve the soil over time and this will lead to more fertile soil, higher yields and gradually....more rainfall.

Tbh I think our climate is changing, I don't think there will be droughts in the coming years unless another big weather change happens. Lately, we've been getting more rainfall than usual, flooding and cyclones. Less drought but with this new change in the horn comes other challenges, flooding, cyclones that will cause damage and ofc the locust issue.

The question is which one is worse for us? Im betting that drought cause more damage, economic loss and displacement.

Here's interesting report from the 2017 drought that heavily impacted Somalia

https://www.gfdrr.org/sites/default/files/publication/122991-v2-Revised-GSURR-Somalia-DINA-Report-Volume-II-180111-Digital.pdf

http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/901031516986381462/pdf/122991-v1-GSURR-Somalia-DINA-Report-Volume-I-180116-Digital.pdf

 

[Ras]

Nice interesting thread, Somalia has the potential to feed itself but also export food, most of the cultivated land is located in the shabelle river thanks to the Italians and barre gov that continued the Banana republic, sadly jubba river is not as developed.



Tbh I think our climate is changing, I don't think there will be droughts in the coming years unless another big weather change happens. Lately, we've been getting more rainfall than usual, flooding and cyclones. Less drought but with this new change in the horn comes other challenges, flooding, cyclones that will cause damage and ofc the locust issue.

The question is which one is worse for us? Im betting that drought cause more damage, economic loss and displacement.

Here's interesting report from the 2017 drought that heavily impacted Somalia

https://www.gfdrr.org/sites/default/files/publication/122991-v2-Revised-GSURR-Somalia-DINA-Report-Volume-II-180111-Digital.pdf

http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/901031516986381462/pdf/122991-v1-GSURR-Somalia-DINA-Report-Volume-I-180116-Digital.pdf

I think we'll be able to ward of locusts with tech soon.

The biggest issue we have in Somalia isn't the long drought but the shorter ones that are always there year after year.

Most cultivated plants can't go weeks without some decent rainfall.

Also when the rain stops flowing we can't rely on the rivers so we need to come up with an alternative solution by ourselves just like how the Dutch built simple dikes to solve their flooding issues.

 

[Pipit]

Keep pumping out these type of threads akhi

 

[Rooble44]

Loving this thread, I made a thread similar a few weeks ago and it didn't pick up much traction. Not sure if I posted it on the wrong section or if people on this forum are more interested in Fadhi Ku Dirir iyo qabyaalad. My father passed away recently and left me quite a fair bit of land around Beledweyne, Baidoa and Xamar. I've been meaning to learn about agriculture and the situation back home, not for profit but to actually help those in need.

 

[BobSmoke]

Fantastic thread and great info you shared.
Lemme elaborate more off your ting.

As a nation we cannot keep putting pressure on Jubba and Shabbelle for too long. We have natural wealth which is land and livestock.

I checked this thing out called Water Cup by Paani Foundation and I thought to myself, if Dryland somalis combined this with growing bamboo, vetiver grass, and herbs like Moringa n stuff. Somalia as a nation would be gucci as far as water, energy, food and medicine is concerned.
The community would benefit a lot from this due to chronically high unemployment would be tackled. The possibility of work are endless since we have 1.4% arable land and we have too many young people ready to work for their future.

Spoiler: Click here for the vid links

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Spoiler: Click here for the vid links

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We would still be kinda broke but atleast not poor and most importantly, wellfed.

The livestock are better fed aswell meaning higher quality meat.

There's more benefits to write but you get the drift

 

[Helios]

We have a couple options for water:


Surface water resources

There isn't much data about rainfall and surface water resources in the north but it might be quite a bit.

In regards to the south:

Juba river has a discharge of around 180 cubic meters per second.

Shabelle has around 75 m^3/s although it's intermittent and usually doesn't reach the coast unless there's some high rainfall. Even then; most of it gets wasted through flooding or dries out due to multiple reasons.


If you add up Juba's river total volume that reaches Luuq throughout the year you get around 5.5 billion cubic meters.

If we used 100% of that to irrigate farm land near the river you would have enough for 500,000 hectares ... Assuming 100% efficiency and no evaporation.

Let's say you get a yield of around 5 tons of wheat per hectare that's around 2.5m tons and that should feed around 2.5 million people.


Shabelle river has a lot less water so let's say it provides a third of the water accessible by the Juba river which should irrigate enough land to feed 800,000 people.

Altogether that's barely 3.5 million out of 15+ million in Somalia.

We definitely won't be using 100% of the water flow of both rivers and there's definitely going to be wastage for multiple reasons like evaporation and flooding.

Would be great if we could use a fraction of that water volume. 40% would be highly optimistic.

It's a way to start though.


Rainfed Agriculture

Here's the hope but also the depressing part.

Some parts of the north and a big chunk of the south do have fairly decent precipitation:

Unfortunately our climate has wild swings and we could go months without rainfall without a warning.

That would make rainfed agriculture untenable since you could lose all your wealth instantly.

You could use some government funded insurance to cover this but men make plans but God has the last word.

Have a far fetched idea that could solve this though:

Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about so just humor me.

There's the option of mobilizing nationwide volunteers and the government to create a rainfall collection project where we build huge reservoirs to balance the supply of water.

How do we collect the rainfall?

By creating tens of thousands of mini canals (ditches) that pulls rainfall into diversion channels using gravity to send it to a lower elevation and then feed it into the two main rivers or a reservoir.

Works just like gutter.

The region where we get the most rainfall you have some of the most flat land with a sloping elevation towards the coast.

The ditches would not even need to be that expensive to build if we make clever use of the existing geology.

Let's say we pick a 100,000 square kilometers area that gets around 500 mm of rain per year.

That's around 50 billion cubic meters!

If were able to make use of 10% of that we could feed another 2/3 million people and 10x that number if we used expensive greenhouses like in Spain.

Not only should this provide us with more water for irrigation but could possibly turn that whole area green if there's suddenly thousands of canals crisscrossing the region.

Hopefully that should help improve the soil over time and this will lead to more fertile soil, higher yields and gradually....more rainfall.

This is interesting

Nice interesting thread, Somalia has the potential to feed itself but also export food, most of the cultivated land is located in the shabelle river thanks to the Italians and barre gov that continued the Banana republic, sadly jubba river is not as developed.



Tbh I think our climate is changing, I don't think there will be droughts in the coming years unless another big weather change happens. Lately, we've been getting more rainfall than usual, flooding and cyclones. Less drought but with this new change in the horn comes other challenges, flooding, cyclones that will cause damage and ofc the locust issue.

The question is which one is worse for us? Im betting that drought cause more damage, economic loss and displacement.

Here's interesting report from the 2017 drought that heavily impacted Somalia

https://www.gfdrr.org/sites/default/files/publication/122991-v2-Revised-GSURR-Somalia-DINA-Report-Volume-II-180111-Digital.pdf

http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/901031516986381462/pdf/122991-v1-GSURR-Somalia-DINA-Report-Volume-I-180116-Digital.pdf

Good pdfs I'll take a look at them, I'd rather take flooding than drought too since you can work with more water but you can't work with dust.

Keep pumping out these type of threads akhi

Ty sxb, it's much more productive than senseless tc stuff. Whenever I'm curious about these things I tend to make a thread about development or climate.

Loving this thread, I made a thread similar a few weeks ago and it didn't pick up much traction. Not sure if I posted it on the wrong section or if people on this forum are more interested in Fadhi Ku Dirir iyo qabyaalad. My father passed away recently and left me quite a fair bit of land around Beledweyne, Baidoa and Xamar. I've been meaning to learn about agriculture and the situation back home, not for profit but to actually help those in need.

People are more interested in this sadly yeah. I saw your thread it got some replies dw. AUN to your father, going back to help is noble.

Fantastic thread and great info you shared.
Lemme elaborate more off your ting.

As a nation we cannot keep putting pressure on Jubba and Shabbelle for too long. We have natural wealth which is land and livestock.

I checked this thing out called Water Cup by Paani Foundation and I thought to myself, if Dryland somalis combined this with growing bamboo, vetiver grass, and herbs like Moringa n stuff. Somalia as a nation would be gucci as far as water, energy, food and medicine is concerned.
The community would benefit a lot from this due to chronically high unemployment would be tackled. The possibility of work are endless since we have 1.4% arable land and we have too many young people ready to work for their future.

Spoiler: Click here for the vid links

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Spoiler: Click here for the vid links

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

We would still be kinda broke but atleast not poor and most importantly, wellfed.

The livestock are better fed aswell meaning higher quality meat.

There's more benefits to write but you get the drift

Ty, we have the capacity to dig these CCT's all over the arid parts of the country. I'm watching the first video right now. Make a thread on this Water Revolution stuff it deserves it's own topic

Spoiler

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[BobSmoke]

This is interesting



Good pdfs I'll take a look at them, I'd rather take flooding than drought too since you can work with more water but you can't work with dust.




Ty sxb, it's much more productive than senseless tc stuff. Whenever I'm curious about these things I tend to make a thread about development or climate.


People are more interested in this sadly yeah. I saw your thread it got some replies dw. AUN to your father, going back to help is noble.



Ty, we have the capacity to dig these CCT's all over the arid parts of the country. I'm watching the first video right now. Make a thread on this Water Revolution stuff it deserves it's own topic

Spoiler

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Say no more fam.

 

[Rooble44]

This is interesting



Good pdfs I'll take a look at them, I'd rather take flooding than drought too since you can work with more water but you can't work with dust.




Ty sxb, it's much more productive than senseless tc stuff. Whenever I'm curious about these things I tend to make a thread about development or climate.


People are more interested in this sadly yeah. I saw your thread it got some replies dw. AUN to your father, going back to help is noble.



Ty, we have the capacity to dig these CCT's all over the arid parts of the country. I'm watching the first video right now. Make a thread on this Water Revolution stuff it deserves it's own topic

Spoiler

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Absolutely, deserves its own thread. Please tag me should there be a thread.

 

[Pipit]

Spoiler

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[Habane]

Somalis need to stop herding and start farming or fishing especially in Somaliland

 

[BobSmoke]

fellas and ladies, please read this

https://www.permaculturenews.org/files/ipc10/ANTS-Somalia.pdf

 

[BobSmoke]

Spoiler

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Immense benefits. Less bloodshed between geeljires from opposing tribes is one of them.

 

[Xanibacal bin Barqa]

A lot of information I was looking for ,
great thread .