When announcing the top achieving students on SABI’s Schools’ Irrigation Course – Matthys Mouton from Augsburg Landbou-gimnasium, Lian van Wyk from Boland Agricultural School and Franco van der Mescht from Oakdale Agricultural School – the South African Irrigation Institute (SABI) technical executive officer, Isobel van der Stoep, said growing skills from schools level in water use efficiency is vital in South Africa.
While the country is suffering a water crisis, wider growth and awareness of technical and agricultural skills in irrigation and water use will help to ensure water is used optimally in the future. SABI is a non-profit organisation that promotes knowledge and further technical education on optimum irrigation and water conservation.
“We would like to congratulate our top students, who excelled on the course. Knowledge of optimal irrigation and water-saving technologies is not only a good course for agricultural students, however. We need to build technical skills in our country. Irrigation, for one, already faces a very serious skills shortage. We hope more students in high school will look at irrigation as a career option.
“In our view, all students – not just agricultural school learners – should be made aware of water saving and the technologies that achieve optimal water use. As SABI, we are intent on encouraging a technical learning culture on our mission to encourage optimal water use and water conservation,” said Van der Stoep.
The students completed the SABI Irrigation Course last year, which was attended by a total of 113 learners from Oakdale Agricultural School, Riversdale, Boland Agricultural School, Paarl, and Augsburg Landbougimnasium, Clanwilliam. The school programme includes basic foundations of various irrigation technologies as well as irrigation scheduling and system evaluation topics.
While SABI funded the schools initiative from 2011, the Western Cape Department of Agriculture has assisted with the funding from 2014. The prizes for the top learners were sponsored by industry partners, Lindsay and Wilo pumps.
“We hope the SABI school course can boost awareness of irrigation and we aim to create interest among the future employees to explore irrigation as a career. We are looking at expanding the course in the Western Cape and also to the other provinces,” commented Van der Stoep.
