An investigation of farmers level of participation in revitalized smallholder irrigation schemes in the KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa.

Abstract

Agricultural irrigation development should be considered an essential cornerstone for food security, economic growth, and adaptation to climate change. Effective irrigation management contributes substantially to many Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Nevertheless, current irrigation schemes in Sub Saharan Africa perform below expectations, resulting in unreliable, inadequate, and inequitable access to irrigation water. Due to this, Sub-Saharan Africa is hindered from reaching its developmental goals in the irrigation sector. Various researchers identified five major limitations of African irrigation schemes, i.e., high capital costs, exaggerated and overestimated gains, a lack of understanding of the social reality, the absence of management skills and responsible human resources, and the neglect of operations and maintenance. Furthermore, most studies on African irrigation schemes also identified an overly centralised and bureaucratic management system as a major limitation. Thus, management transfer became a key strategy. Management transfer can be categorized differently according to the mode of implementation and phases, such as irrigation management transfer (IMT), participatory irrigation management (PIM), turnover or responsibility transfer. In South Africa, PIM/IMT policies were adopted and referred to as Revitalisation of Smallholder Irrigation Schemes (RESIS), which aimed at rehabilitating irrigation infrastructure and providing farmers with access to input and output markets, training, financial support and assists with establishment of functional institutions within irrigation schemes. However, most countries, including South Africa, lack effective policy implementation strategies that encourage farmer participation to maintain irrigation schemes after government support is withdrawn. The main aim of the study was to investigate factors affecting farmers' level of participation during the decision-making, implementation, benefit sharing, and evaluation stages of PIM/IMT related programmes such as the RESIS in South Africa, and their effect on farmers' access to water for irrigation in selected revitalised smallholder irrigation scheme in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Province, South Africa. The study described demographic and socioeconomic factors of farmers in Makhathini, NdumoB, Tugela Ferry, and Mooi River irrigation schemes using descriptive statistics, an analysis of variance (ANOVA), and a Chi-square test. Multiple Linear and Probit Regression models were used to determine the effect of selected socioeconomic and demographic factors, RESIS knowledge, the RESIS programme and its implementers, and access to irrigation on farmers' level of participation and farmers' access to water in four revitalised smallholder irrigation schemes, respectively.

Results indicated that the average age of farmers across four irrigation schemes is 54.38 years. Household heads own 4.66ha of land on average, but farmers in Makhathini and NdumoB have significantly larger plots than farmers in Mooi River and Tugela Ferry. Farmers in different irrigation schemes have statistically significant differences in education and marital status. Despite this, more than half of farmers were married. RESIS was known to more than half of the farmers in the four irrigation schemes. Furthermore, farmers expressed positive attitudes towards training and institutional arrangements, but were dissatisfied with their access to markets, financial support, and irrigation infrastructure. Farmers in Tugela Ferry were pleased with their irrigation infrastructure, but other irrigation schemes were not. Farmers in Makhathini were happier with market access than farmers in other irrigation schemes. Farmers were generally pleased with the participatory approaches, efficiency, effectiveness, and fairness of RESIS implementers. The overall Farmer Participation Index (FPI) in four irrigation schemes was around 50%, indicating that more farmers were not participating. Over 50% of farmers did not have adequate, timely, or equitable access to water across four irrigation schemes. With the exception of gender, all variables regressed against farmer participation were statistically significant. Age, education level, marital status, household and plot sizes, farmers' access to irrigation water, farmers' knowledge of RESIS and RESIS market access, financial support, institutional support, rehabilitated irrigation infrastructure and training, and RESIS implementers' fairness and participatory approach, efficiency, and effectiveness were found to have statistically significant effects on farmers' participation in various stages of the RESIS programme. Farmers' attitudes towards access to rehabilitated irrigation infrastructure, markets, financial support, training, the effectiveness of RESIS Implementers, and farmer participation during RESIS decision-making stages all had a statistically significant impact on their likelihood of accessing water for irrigation in four revitalised irrigation schemes. The implementation plans for the RESIS programme should not be viewed as one size fits all because demographic and socioeconomic factors may vary from irrigation scheme to irrigation scheme. Consequently, the study recommends determining a suitable project implementation plan for each scheme that will encourage farmers to participate throughout all phases of RESIS.