Policy recommendations

The SAFI project developed the following recommendations with policy makers to help them work with farmers implementing their own irrigation initiatives.

Make farmer-led irrigation development part of economic and social security strategies

  • Seek ways to reduce vulnerability and spread benefits of irrigation among different social groups;
  • Facilitate access to reliable markets for inputs and produce;
  • Identify and remove constraints such as transport infrastructure, taxation of key inputs and electricity supply.

Learn from existing practice and the diversity of irrigation that farmers operate, design and influence

  • Analyse the dynamics and constraints of farmer led irrigation development in specific contexts;
  • Manage expectations for replicability of experience from one site to another;
  • Encourage opportunities for farmer-to-farmer learning.

Get more accurate data

  • Evaluate alternative, and possibly complementary, methods of mapping and measuring irrigation beyond formal ‘schemes’;
  • Revise irrigation statistics to enable recognition of location and extent of farmer led irrigation development;
  • Identify the status and support the needs of farmer-led irrigation development.

Develop a supportive and accessible regulatory framework

  • Recognise small scale irrigators as productive water users;
  • Avoid onerous or costly registration procedures that stifle initiatives and dynamism;
  • Review legislative and regulatory frameworks for water and agriculture to ensure they take account of farmer-led initiatives;
  • Explore investment and technical strategies for intensification instead of expansion of irrigation;
  • Identify how state agencies’ technical and organisational capacity needs to be improved to enable more effective engagement with farmer-led irrigation development.

Key messages:

  • Benefits of farmer-led irrigation development include: raised productivity, incomes and employment; cheaper for governments than large-scale irrigation schemes; makes greater use of farmers’ local knowledge.
  • Challenges that arise from widespread irrigation expansion (not only as the result of farmer-led irrigation development) include: increased water use; issues of competition with other water users; may accentuate existing social and economic inequality; increased pesticide use may be associated with pollution risk.
  • Active lobbying by farmers for government support  can be part of farmer-led irrigation development, but flexible funding, community-ownership of the intervention process and an eye for existing local institutional arrangements are key to maximise the benefits of any intervention
  • By creating a policy and regulatory framework which values farmer-led irrigation development in all its diversity, and by removing constraints such as poor infrastructure, governments can support farmer-led irrigation development while mitigating possible risks.
  • The rapid expansion of farmer-led irrigation initiatives offers great benefits to farmers and the rural economy, but its rapid spread and dynamic nature also comes with its own challenges for policy makers and irrigation practitioners.

Suggested further reading:

Acknowledgements

  • Phil Woodhouse, Global Development Institute, The University of Manchester