What We Do

A Systems Approach to Small-Scale Irrigation and Mechanization

Irrigation and mechanization technology varies widely, but adoption has been low in most low-income countries, particularly amongst women, youth, and other marginalized people. Often, even low-cost, simple technologies may not be a good fit for the physical or the socio-economic environment of small-scale farmers. For example, an affordable irrigation pump may work well but be too expensive to repair when it breaks. By looking at the whole value chain in which the technology will be acquired and used, we can improve the technology’s uptake and longevity.

Challenges

Many times, a technology that is initially considered well suited for a particular agricultural environment fails unexpectedly or is not favoured by local farmers. The reason or this failure may only become clear through post-mortem examination. The reasons may be minor, but crucial to technology success or failure. Sometimes several small issues may combine to create a large enough hurdle that causes the technology to fail. Each issue may seem insignificant on its own, but together lead to more considerable challenges.

Contributing to Solutions:

Rather than a narrow scope of either the physical environment, economic conditions, or the crop type, ILIMS looks at broader “socio-technical bundles.” This means that ILIMS considers the aspects that may influence whether a technology is used, and how these aspects may influence one another. In doing so, ILIMS aims to uncover solutions that are durable, favoured by small farmers, and contribute to lasting prosperity in rural areas.

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Building an Enabling Environment

The policy and planning environment for irrigation and mechanization systems is invisible, but very important – governance takes place at local and national levels, and it is difficult for individual farmers to succeed if wider governance initiatives are missing. Private sector integration is a key part of the solution.

Challenges

Too often, the institutional environment does not align with smallholder agricultural productivity as much as it could, and smallholders do not benefit from wider government and private sector initiatives. In many cases, a lack of trained and properly capacitated and funded extension officers, water management officials, and other partners further hampers progress. Remote geographies, difficult terrain, and unpredictable climates can complicate the problem.

Contributing to Solutions

ILIMS recognizes that at the national level initiatives across the stakeholder ecosystem need to be coordinated and complementary to ensure resilience of people and prevent risks to water and soil from farm to landscape scales. ILIMS is particularly interested in establishing what policies, technologies, and institutions are needed to reduce adverse impacts from mechanization and irrigation and to boost and underpin its uptake.

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Boosting private sector participation

Private sector partnerships at different scales and levels are vital to improving agricultural productivity, through supply of machinery and spare parts, fertilizers, seed, knowledge resources, and many others. Development of the private sector goes hand in hand with strengthening of the public sector to facilitate and support appropriate private sector commercialization and scaling activities.

Challenges

Entry into agricultural markets by private sector enterprises in low income and emerging markets is often complex and risky, deterring many from investing in the sector, or raising costs prohibitively when they do. The economic and social risks, particularly to women, youth, and other marginalized groups need to be more clearly defined, and tailored solutions presented.

Contributing to Solutions

ILIMS is working on establishing which distribution and marketing approaches and business models can strengthen and broaden mechanization and irrigation systems for different actors within the market system. Financial tools and strategies, such as innovative ways to access credit and potential income from carbon finance, are also part of ILIMS’ work.

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Skills and Opportunities

Strengthened local capacity at all levels of the irrigation and mechanization systems is the foundation for local leadership and sustainability and is particularly important as agriculture shifts towards more complex models employing mechanization and irrigation systems, with the increased demand on natural resources that these can imply. The private sector also needs skilled personnel for marketing, distribution, repairs, and management.

Challenges

Rural areas in low-income countries are often stuck in a cycle of low wages and low skills. Some skills are hard to acquire, and skilled workers often migrate out of these areas for better opportunities in towns and cities. Training, apprenticeship, and mentoring opportunities are often very limited. Increasing risk due to climate change will make further demands on the limited pool of skilled workers.

Contributing to Solutions

ILIMS is interested in the capacities and skills needed by private sector workers to transition into irrigation and mechanization systems on small farms. What capacity strengthening approaches and methods are most successful and durable? And how can the public sector best be capacitated to support the transition? How can the supply of skilled workers be ensured for the long-term? These are all questions which are central to ILIMS’ approach.

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More nutritious food and better health

Irrigation and mechanization systems have vast potential to boost nutrition and health, both on farms and in the wider community. However, more work needs to be done to make sure that advances in mechanization and irrigation translate directly into better nutrition, particularly for women and children on small farms. Growing more food does not always mean that everyone on the farms who grow it benefit, although relatively small changes can greatly strengthen the relationship between increasing farm productivity and improving nutrition and health.

Challenges

Some community members, particularly women and children, do not always benefit in terms of health and nutrition when farm productivity rises. There are various reasons for this, and solutions depend on the context of each farming community or even individual farm.

Contributing to Solutions

ILIMS is investigating the ways in which irrigation and mechanization can improve nutrition and health, especially for marginalized groups. ILIMS is working to establish what institutional partnerships, and what types of knowledge, are most important in cementing the links between farm productivity increases and nutritional outcomes.

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Sustainable water use in landscapes

Making the most of available water at the farm and catchment level is of the utmost importance, particularly as climate change means less certainty around rainfall. Water use by irrigation systems needs to be balanced with environmental requirements.

Challenges

Erosion, deforestation, and aridification are often the close cousins of small-scale agriculture, depriving small farmers of the environmental goods and services that a healthy natural environment with sufficient water resources can provide. As climate changes, and with the introduction of unfamiliar mechanization and irrigation systems, there is a risk to water and land resources, and therefore to long-term sustainability.

Contributing to Solutions

ILIMS is working on innovative techniques for monitoring and managing water resources at scales ranging from the small farm up to the catchment. In particular, ILIMS is interested in how solutions that are successful in some environments can be transferred to others, in which techniques have the best cost to benefit ratios, and how data science, including remote sensing, might be able to guide actions. ILIMS sees agricultural water management in landscapes as a core part of reducing risk, and therefore of making on-farm prosperity more likely.

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Women make up around half of all smallholder farmers in low-income countries, and in many cases women do almost all the hard manual labour of farming such as weeding or fetching water which mechanization could alleviate. Progress towards irrigation and mechanization systems on farms is greatly hampered if women are not full partners in the transition.

Challenges

Women and youth have different needs and preferences for agricultural technologies, including irrigation and mechanization. They also face greater challenges in adopting irrigation and mechanization technologies and services, and do not always benefit directly from the use of mechanized tools due to limited access to and control over resources, limited access to services like extension and credit, and restrictive social norms.

Contributing to Solutions

ILIMS sees gender as a cross-cutting issue that informs everything that the lab does. This is because the transition to increased productivity because of successful mechanization and irrigation is facilitated by a full consideration of gender issues across all aspects of farming value chains and systems.

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