Farmers can substantially deploy irrigation potential through improved management environment: enabling factors of farmers' involvement in resource‐efficient irrigation management

Abstract

AbstractThe poor performance of government‐managed irrigation systems still spills over into developing countries despite numerous attempts to improve efficiency through management transfer to farmers. Weak engagement of farmers in management is identified as one of the underlying causes of poor performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors determining farmers' engagement in irrigation management in the Mubuku smallholder scheme, Uganda. The paper presents an assessment of the governing institutions through a qualitative method and a quantitative analysis to identify enabling factors of famers' engagement in management. As results, the paper argues that the current institutional setting of the scheme is only partially in line with predefined principles of self‐governing irrigation schemes. Farmers are not considered as creating a two‐tiered management structure due to the weak enforcement mechanism towards free‐riders, insufficient monitoring of resources and activities, lack of effective means of conflict resolution, an underdeveloped de facto institution and lack of organizational layers. Based on a farmers' survey, the outputs of semi‐parametric (SML) and semi‐non‐parametric (SNP) models indicate that education and household size have a significant and positive impact on farmers' engagement in management, while land size large enough to require employees has a negative and significant impact on engagement.