Somalis are beggars with rich fertile land

[SomaliWadaniSoldier]

For example reer baidoa rather want sadaqah instead of working on their fertile land.

Most people agree that only Shabeellaha Hoose can feed all Somalis in Somalia.

 

[Thegoodshepherd]

For example reer baidoa rather want sadaqah instead of working on their fertile land.View attachment 32726


Most people agree that only Shabeellaha Hoose can feed all Somalis in Somalia.

This is a total myth. There is not enough water in Lower Shabelle to irrigate that much farmland. And there is not enough farmland in Lower Shabelle even if the water was available. Even if you made full use of the Shabelle and Juba and irrigated sorghum yielding 8 tons per hectare you would not be able to attain self sufficiency in grains let alone vegetables and proteins. At Some point in the 1970s and 1980s It was possible for Somalia to achieve food self sufficiency, but that ship 25 years ago with our exponential population growth.

 

[Diomande]

Pussy begging s i'm tired of this xoolo nation

 

[Apollo]

That land belongs to Bantus.

The genuine Somalis live in shitty deserts.

 

[World]

That land belongs to Bantus.

The genuine Somalis live in shitty deserts.

Rahanweyn live in Baidoa you fool and are agro-pastoralists. Your obsession with Madows has even made you a kaafir.

 

[Deactivated]

Puntland must buy a 50 year lease in gobols that don’t use fertile lands.

It will be a barren land act, states can sell other state owned business shares into the fertile basket. Before Sakin leases SWS for $50 for 100 years.

 

[Nightline Kid]

What’s a country with a similar geographic landscape to Somalia that we can compare with?

 

[World]

What’s a country with a similar geographic landscape to Somalia that we can compare with?

The Sahel regions.

 

[Apollo]

What’s a country with a similar geographic landscape to Somalia that we can compare with?

The Sahel regions.

Botswana and Namibia are the closest I'd say. Eritrea kind of as well.

The Sahel countries have more extreme deserts and extreme jungles that Somalia doesn't have.

 

[Xooshdheere]

 

[Agent 47]

Wallahi. I remember back 2008 in xamar, every street there was raxanweyn/elaay people begging.

 

[Deactivated]

Wallahi. I remember back 2008 in xamar, every street there was raxanweyn/elaay people begging.

That’s nothing to laugh about.

Those people are maskiin families who come to Xamaar for IDP camps and access to the central government. Thier State is still in infancy marred incompetent leaders.

 

[RasCanjero-]

Even with the limited amount of water available we could still cultivate up to 300 thousand hectares.

The figure above is from link but it would be great if we done our own assessments on our surface water resources since I've seen a couple papers with different figures.

Rain fed agriculture could work within some regions but they'll also need irrigation to make up for the erratic rainfall.

Remember, all this costs money and especially since the infrastructure isn't in place we'll probably have to spend $500-$800 dollars per hectare to pump the water, import and setup the irrigation infrastructure, fertilisers, pesticides and etc.

The margins for farming is already tiny and the amount of work agriculture in Somalia requires would scare away most investors unless there was a huge domestic market along with some protectionism.


However the main obstacle apart from shady land laws is finding a market for the produce.

Food aid is pushing down the prices of food in Somalia and it's actually super difficult trying to find export markets for food produced in Somalia.

We don't have any trade agreements (even with the Gulf) so we're less competitive than other countries.

We can't just simply ship our food to developed countries since it would require years of testing and bureaucracy and even then we still have to compete against their government subsidised products.

Somalia requires around 5 -10 million hectares to become self sufficient in non meat food production.

Even if we used up every drop in the Juba and Shabelle river; we won't be able to cover even 10% of our needs.

We could look into rain fall collection schemes and I'm sure we could collect millions of cubic meters of water with some innovations to cut costs.... but that would only cover a few hundred hectares to a few thousand max.

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Ideas to drastically increase rainfall over Somalia would just most likely send more rain to Ethiopia which they'll dam for their own use.

We could either move the Amhar mountains or focus on exporting manufactured goods and import all the food we need until a new solution comes about.

 

[Thegoodshepherd]

@RasCanjero if we planted only high yielding rice and used 75% the water, we could produce about 20% of our grains needs. The question is is it worth that water?

 

[World]

@RasCanjero if we planted only high yielding rice and used 75% the water, we could produce about 20% of our grains needs. The question is is it worth that water?

Even the most drought tolerant rice is water hungry, I don't think Somalis should plant it when it isn't even that nutritious. There are other alternative African grains which require far less water such as pearl millet that grows from 350 to 600 mm.

 

[Waxwaalan]

That land belongs to Bantus.

The genuine Somalis live in shitty deserts.

they fled there whatchu talkin bout

anaga leh

 

[RasCanjero-]

@RasCanjero if we planted only high yielding rice and used 75% the water, we could produce about 20% of our grains needs. The question is is it worth that water?

The maths works out and we should be able to cover 20% of our nutritional needs (100% of our rice consumption - 750 thousand tons).

However...

We have an higher than average rice consumption per capita and rice isn't the most water efficient plant regardless of how high yielding it is.

Don't have much data on the rice strain you're referring to but rice regardless of type, is a water intensive plant that usually requires more than 10,000 m^3 of water per hectare.

Actually, it's probably a lot more as the usual way it's cultivated; flooded paddies, will evaporate most the water and requires constant topping up.

For the amount of investment it will require in irrigation (forget rain fed rice in Somalia) we probably should use our limited water resources on plants like potatoes or sugarcane for bio fuels which would produce a lot more mass per litre of water.

Also staple foods have extremely low margins due to the generous international food aid you'll have to compete with.

So even if you cover 20% of our needs; you'll still need to figure out how to use the remaining 25% water to produce the other 80% of our nutritional consumption.

We're not in a state run economy so there will be a coordination problem which will lead to most arable land owners going for the most profitable cash crop option unless there are incentives to grow rice (subsidies which we can't afford ).

Alternative solution would be to gradually impose increasing import tariffs (& export limitations...) for stuff we think we ought to grow ourselves but that would just lead to corruption unless backed with a strategy to help farmers increase yields and long term guarantees for domestic market protections.

However if we did that then the World Bank & IMF would kill any chance we have at integrating with the wider global economy.

 

[Madaxkuti]

@merka @waraabe @Thegoodshepherd @jugjugwacwac @oday1kenobi @xisaabiye @Jjero
Many people don`t know this but the area between hargeisa and borama recieves the joint highest rainfall in somali inhabited areas of the horn . Heck it gets the same rainfall as the jubas and shabelle areas in south as shown below.

However despite this SL still mostly relies on ethiopia for food even though a substantial amount of it can be grown within its borders. This area has a lot of potential thats not being utilized.

Below is a satellite image of how farming looks near wajaale

 

[Thegoodshepherd]

The maths works out and we should be able to cover 20% of our nutritional needs (100% of our rice consumption - 750 thousand tons).

However...

We have an higher than average rice consumption per capita and rice isn't the most water efficient plant regardless of how high yielding it is.

Don't have much data on the rice strain you're referring to but rice regardless of type, is a water intensive plant that usually requires more than 10,000 m^3 of water per hectare.

Actually, it's probably a lot more as the usual way it's cultivated; flooded paddies, will evaporate most the water and requires constant topping up.

For the amount of investment it will require in irrigation (forget rain fed rice in Somalia) we probably should use our limited water resources on plants like potatoes or sugarcane for bio fuels which would produce a lot more mass per litre of water.

Also staple foods have extremely low margins due to the generous international food aid you'll have to compete with.

So even if you cover 20% of our needs; you'll still need to figure out how to use the remaining 25% water to produce the other 80% of our nutritional consumption.

We're not in a state run economy so there will be a coordination problem which will lead to most arable land owners going for the most profitable cash crop option unless there are incentives to grow rice (subsidies which we can't afford ).

Alternative solution would be to gradually impose increasing import tariffs (& export limitations...) for stuff we think we ought to grow ourselves but that would just lead to corruption unless backed with a strategy to help farmers increase yields and long term guarantees for domestic market protections.

However if we did that then the World Bank & IMF would kill any chance we have at integrating with the wider global economy.

A free market system may actually be the best use of our limited resources here. It would maximize the economic output, and allow us to import food with the profits. We would just have to admit that we will be dependent on world markets for almost all of our food needs.

This is all assuming that DDSI does not use up the little water we get from the rivers. Keep in mind that population growth in DDSI is even HIGHER than in Somalia!

 

[RasCanjero-]

A free market system may actually be the best use of our limited resources here. It would maximize the economic output, and allow us to import food with the profits. We would just have to admit that we will be dependent on world markets for almost all of our food needs.

This is all assuming that DDSI does not use up the little water we get from the rivers. Keep in mind that population growth in DDSI is even HIGHER than in Somalia!

That would be great if it really was free market system without corruption in place (selective taxes and inability to register lands without being from a specific clan).

However unless you have a ton of foreign currency coming in then you'll have to worry about the times of famine when we can't afford to import any food and have to beg for it instead.

Since we can't do anything about that (lack of water) then we should instead look into alternative ideas.

What if we partnered with commercial farmers from neighbouring countries to take their produce and add value to it before exporting most of it.

Food processing plants aren't high tech and we won't have to pay for imports in advance if we could help farmers double or even triple the value of their produce through producing finished products.

At the same time we could create a ton of jobs and start our foray into mass production.