Mohamed Naouri, Assistant Professor at the Department of Agronomy at Université Mohamed El Bachir El Ibrahimi de Bordj Bou Arréridj, Algeria, gives an example of when he went into the field as an ‘expert’ and attempted to impose his understanding on smallholder farmers.
As an irrigation engineer in the field, and with experience of working for a public Algerian company, I was used to a linear model of innovation and of thinking how best to bring new technologies to farmers.
At the time I was studying towards my PhD and on my first day in the field I entered a greenhouse and saw a young man using technology like in the image below:
When I saw this I thought, “I’m an engineer, they are already using this technology, it will be an easy thesis. I will only need one and a half years instead of three.”
I asked the farmer “What kind of irrigation system are you using and how do you manage it?” He replied, “As you can see, we are using drip irrigation.”. As an irrigation engineer, I imagined a drip irrigation system and had a picture of the basin or container, a pumping station, filters, the central fertigation unit and a distribution network. So I asked him to show me the water basin or the container. I also expected to see fertigation units and filters.
In reality, what I saw was this…
I asked again “What system are you using. Is it really drip irrigation you are using?” He replied “Yes.”.
So I asked to see the water basin or the container for the water. And he said “We don’t have a container or basin, we don’t really need it.”. So I asked, “When you take the water from the tube well, where do you put it? Where does it go?” He took me outside and showed me this,
“The water goes in this water column,” he said. I replied “What’s a water column and how do you use it?” And he said, “Are you sure you’re an irrigation engineer?”.
I then asked to see the filters. He said “We don’t use those, we threw them away. The irrigation engineers at the time brought them to us but they are not useful in our area.” Since this time I have seen numerous irrigation systems like the one I saw that day.
Then I said, “Okay. You don’t have basins and you don’t have filters but you really need a fertigation unit.”. He said “Yes, but this is what we use…” and he held up two jerry (watering) cans.
I thought it would be an easy thesis but it took me more than 3 years to understand all of this. I told the farmer “I am going to stop thinking like an irrigation engineer” and I asked him to draw me his irrigation system.
Farmer-led irrigation systems may look very different from text book examples, but engineers and researchers should respect this and try to understand the ingenuity of local farmers. Unorthodox irrigation systems that have been adapted to suit local contexts can be extremely effective.