CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION 1.1. Background Rapid population growth and extensive damage from natural disasters have intensified the worldwide struggle for adequate food supplies. Thus, the urgency of increasing food production becomes patently obvious while one of the basic inputs required for achieving this still remains water. If adequate supply and control of water are not ensured, it is very difficult to grow crops and vegetables more than once a year. Conversely, to achieve optimum production of these farm produce, adequate use of available natural resources or development of new natural resource becomes necessary if starvation and malnutrition and their related problems, are to be minimized. Many parts of the world where rainfall is not adequate have so far developed new methods of harnessing natural resources, which may be either surface dams or reservoirs for their domestic, irrigation and livestock activities. Similarly, places where rainfall is seasonal and the aforementioned facilities are also not available, sewage water from drainage basins or ponds (pools of stagnant water) have been put to use for small-scale irrigation to supplement rainy season farming. The use of this facility for irrigating farm lands has long been noted in northern Nigeria where rainfall is seasonal. The use of sewage water on farmlands provided copious resource products (e.g. carrot, lettuce, onion and other vegetables) and a sustainable livelihood to several number of people in Northern Nigeria. On the other hand, use of this delicate resource can result into numerous health and environmental problems. Obviously, the chemical status of this delicate resource would have its influence on the receiving lands, which might possibly reflect on the produce 2 cultivated on such lands and subsequently ends up within the inner system of humans and becomes a danger to life.

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