Determinants of the Performance of Small Scale Irrigation in Improving Household Farm Income in Hadiya Zone, Ethiopia

Abstract

This study was mainly aimed to investigate the determinants of the performance of small scale irrigation in improving household farm income in hadiya zone, Ethiopia. Both Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression analysis were used for analyzing quantitative data. From the total included five determinant factors, education level of respondents’, household labor and land holding size, household income had significant positive effect on the use of irrigation water at 5% significance level. However, age of respondents and farm distance from river had significant negative effect on the use of irrigation water at 10% and 5% significance level respectively.  From the total Irrigation user respondents’ household the majority (96.2%) have use irrigation water from the rivers and which are common resources and major sources of irrigation water in the area. Out of the total irrigation user respondents (79.7%) have harvested perennial crops more than two times and grown annual crops two times per year from the same farm. While out of the total irrigation non-user respondents’ household depended on only rain fed agriculture (56.4%) have grown annual crops only one time per year from the same farm. Consequently, the independent sample test result showed that the irrigation user respondents’ household obtained significantly larger mean annual gross farm income than irrigation non-user respondents’ household at 1% significance level. As a result, the irrigation user respondents’ household obtained excess of 17067.98 birr of mean annual gross farm income that obtained by irrigation non-user respondents’ household. According to these findings, in addition to river water it should be better to initiate farmers to develop and use spring water at community level and shallow wale at household level. It is likely to be valuable for future irrigation development. Governmental and non-governmental organizations should give emphasis on the adult education for farmers and that improves farmers’ awareness about adoption of technologies and increases their access to use irrigation water in the study area. And also should give emphasis for provision of credit for farmers and that improves their financial capital to purchase irrigation technologies and to hire labor which fills the gap of family labor shortage.

Keywords: logistic regression, irrigation, food security, economic growth