Impact of Small Scale Irrigation Schemes on Socio-Economic Condition of Smallholder Farmers – Evidence from East Wollega Zone, Ethiopia

Abstract

Expansion of irrigation agriculture has for long been seen as a means to break the cycle of poverty in the Ethiopian country.  The present study is an attempt to investigates the socio-economic impact of small scale irrigation on small holder farmers and potential links between irrigation and food security in East Wollega zone.  Purposive sampling method has been used to select five weak and five strong irrigation schemes while random sampling method was used to select 200 households comprising beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the scheme from the selected area.  A pre-tested structured interview schedule was used to collect relevant primary data during 2013/14 production year and  secondary data were sourced from the official reports.   Apart from conventional analyses, logit model has been used to analyze the socio-economic impact of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. The finding revealed that small scale irrigation scheme had positive impact on the Education level, use of improvised, per capital aggregate income, improved standards of living, marketing and distribution, access to credit, nonfarm income, membership in WUAS, extension contact and average livestock. However, shortage of seed supply, market problem, water management problem, financial and disease resulted in a negative impact.

Keywords: Irrigation scheme, smallholders, socio-economic, logit.