Farming under irrigation management transfer scheme and its impact on yield and net returns in Ghana

Enoch Owusu-Sekyere,Cindy Bibariwiah,Victor Owusu,Emmanuel Donkor

doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.105266

Abstract

This article analyses smallholder irrigation management transfer (IMT) scheme participation and its impacts on yield and net farm returns of rice farmers in northern Ghana. We apply the endogenous switching regression and control function approaches to account for both observed and unobserved policy-relevant drivers of farmers’ decision to participate in IMT and potential endogeneity. Our results show that farmers’ participation in the IMT scheme can enhance their rice yields by 39.56 % and net farm returns by 24.52 % in Ghana. The increased in yield and net returns are linked to the perceived improvement in water supply and availability of water at critical stages of production as well as personal, farm, institutional and location characteristics. Farmers’ decision to operate under IMT schemes are influenced by both observed and unobserved drivers. Large scale rice production tends to be viable under IMT schemes. We discuss the policy implications of IMT scheme participation and recommend succinct policies based on its impact on the welfare of smallholder farmers in developing countries.

Highlights

In Africa and other developing countries, several irrigation schemes and projects managed by government agencies struggled to attain the projected targets, with regards to the operation and main tenance of the irrigation facilities (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations [FAO], 2007; Kakuta, 2019; Sally and Abernethy, 2002)
Specif ically, the results indicate that high water usage fee exerts a negative effect on the likelihood of the rice farmers to participate in the irrigation management transfer (IMT) scheme, whilst adequate water availability at the critical stages of rice production and timely water supply from the irrigation scheme increase the likelihood of the farmers to participate in the IMT scheme
We find that age of farmers contribute significantly to higher yields and net farm returns of the IMT scheme participants

Summary

Introduction

In Africa and other developing countries, several irrigation schemes and projects managed by government agencies struggled to attain the projected targets, with regards to the operation and main tenance of the irrigation facilities (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations [FAO], 2007; Kakuta, 2019; Sally and Abernethy, 2002). As a result of the management failures by governments, organi zations such as the World Bank, FAO and International Water Manage ment Institute (IWMI) promoted the idea of devolving government agencies from managing irrigation schemes and transfer the manage ment responsibilities to private entities, usually water users associations (Hatcho and Tsutsui, 1998; Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations [FAO], 2007; Kakuta, 2019). Some studies have examined the mode of opera tion of the IMT scheme, i.e. whether the irrigation scheme is managed by individual farmers (Coward, 1980; Uphoff, 1986) or farmer-state part nership managed irrigation schemes (Sam-Amoah and Gowing, 2001)

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Results