Water harvesting reshapes farming in Nicaragua. Special reservoirs capture and store excess rainwater

Irrigation of food crops is now possible during the dry season in drought-affected Nicaragua after construction of special reservoirs to capture and store excess rainwater during the country's rainy season.

Reservoirs are among a number of pilot projects currently underway in Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Mexico supported by the Latin American Fund for Irrigated Rice at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia, and financed by the Common Fund for Commodities.

The projects follow in the footsteps of schemes in Brazil and Uruguay in the 1980s, which used similar techniques to transform them into significant rice exporters.

Original source: AlertNet