Introduction

In the period of April to September 2022, we realised the need for the Objectives of the Agricultural Engineering Services to be refined. This needed intervention would help to align the activities of the division in an efficient manner to improve the impact of the AESD, while optimising the division’s resources, and thereby reducing the cost of operations.

 Objectives of the AESD

General Objective:

The general objective of AESD, is to guide the optimization of agricultural land and water resources, to sustainably facilitate the increase in agricultural productivity, and reduce social, environmental and economic cost of production in farming systems. This includes identifying limitations to agricultural productivity, recommending and/or designing sustainable interventions to remove or reduce these limitations, supervising implementation of these interventions, and therefore cause the increase in the efficiency, sustainability, productivity and profitability of agricultural production systems.

The specific Objectives:

1. To guide the reduction of agricultural land degradation in production systems and facilitate the improvement in fertility and productivity, through agricultural land use planning, the design of appropriate soil conservation, biofuel, fertiliser and drainage interventions, and appropriate production system technology transfer.
2. To guide the optimisation of energy usage, through appropriate labour saving technology transfer, and the provision of land preparation services, for the improvement in productive land potential in agricultural production systems.
3. To guide the optimization of agricultural water resources through irrigation scheduling, appropriate soilless cultivation technology transfer, and the design of irrigation, hydroponic and aquaponics systems.