Author: Production editor: Lani van Vuuren

Year: 2024, ISBN: ISBN 9978-0-6392-0535-9

Type: NC Publication, Format: Print & eBook

The South African National Committee on Irrigation & Drainage (SANCID) with support from the Water Research Commission, created a platform to provide an account of South Africa’s irrigation history, including the history of its own origin, some years ago. It was seen as especially pertinent to include the history of irrigation among smallholder farming communities which has hitherto been much neglected. The result is a detailed chronicle of how the irrigation sector developed in South Africa from initial private initiatives to the cooperative flood diversion schemes of the nineteenth century and the large, sophisticated public storage schemes which took shape after unionisation in the early 1900s. The book ends with a glimpse of the current and future challenges faced by both commercial and smallholder irrigation farmers in the country.