“Is Irrigation Fit for Purpose? Relationships between Scheme Size and Performance of Irrigation Systems” by Mure Agbonlahor at the 2023 Water for Food Global Conference. A recording of the presentation can be found on the conference playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSBeKOIXsg3JNyPowwJj6NDSpx4vlnCYj.

1. Is Irrigation Fit for Purpose?
Relationships between Scheme Size and
Performance of Irrigation Systems

2. Background: Irrigation in Africa & Asia
• We will need about 32 mha of “new lands” without Irrigation to meet food
needs of earth’s population for the next 30years
• Many NDCs proposed Irrigation expansion as an adaptation strategy in
key climate action area.
• Past: Focus on large, surface systems for food security crops (rice), and
some cash crops (cotton/sugarcane), also limited medium and smaller-
scale surface systems, often managed by groups of farmers, most
investment in Asia
• Last two decades (due to technological change): Considerable advances
in farmer-financed individual, small-scale or farmer-led, mostly
groundwater-irrigation

3. Distribution of irrigated areas by geographical regions
McCarthy et al. (2023)

4. Fit-for-Purpose irrigation
• What fits the situation and fits the purpose?
Irrigation will need to expand in places where:
• water resources are accessible
• food insecurity levels are critical and
• climate extremes render rainfed systems increasingly infeasible
• To be fit-for-purpose, irrigation systems must use water more efficiently to
optimize the triple roles of:
• improve food and nutritional security
• enhance income and reduce poverty, and
• ensure climate resilience and environmental sustainability

5. Small (<1400 ha) Medium Large
Major Threats to Sustainability 90% 60% 50%
Irrigated Area (average in ha) 954 3824 29353
Cost per ha (average in USD/ha) 17592 8535 2430
Cash-Crop Focus 50% 10% 10%
Project Delays 70% 100% 100%
Project Design Flaws 60% 50% 20%
Problems with Fee Collection 50% 80% 50%
Thin Markets 40% 60% 60%
Collective Action Problems 60% 60% 70%
Land Conflicts 40% 50% 70%
Inappropriate Scheme Use 60% 50% 30%
Threats to vulnerability of surface irrigation (SSA)
McCarthy et al. (2023)

6. Findings: Larger surface Irrigation systems (Africa/Asia)
• Largely built for food-security crops, thus unrealistic to recover investment
cost
• Economies of scale through lower design cost, and typically better quality
of design
• Often less dependent on area rainfall than smaller systems, providing
greater resilience to weather extremes
• Difficult to adapt to changing conditions, thus limited ‘fit-for-purpose’
• Challenging to create collective action for management and maintenance

7. Findings: Individual groundwater irrigation
• More naturally ‘fit-for-purpose’ if initial investment cost can be overcome
• Limited economies of scale, apart from service provision
• Non-motorized extraction provides limited climate resilience, profitability
and production growth
• Continued technological change lowers cost and improves access
• Informal groundwater markets increase farmer access
• Lack of groundwater institutions is a major challenge and can eliminate
‘fit-for-purpose’ in the medium to longer term

8. Recommendations-Large scale systems
• Abandon overly optimistic expectations of irrigator profitability as this sets up systems
for failure as costs of expensive investments cannot be recovered
• More flexibility for farmers to adjust cropping patterns to today’s more rapidly changing
food prices, and agricultural input costs
• Include decentralized management at canal level
• In water-scarce systems: include low-cost, precision water application systems to
address increased competition for limited water resources
• Actively support multiple uses of irrigation water (such as livestock watering, fisheries,
domestic uses and energy generation)
• Ensure more timely delivery of water supplies

9. Recommendations-GW-fed small-scale systems
• Initial investment costs and growing costs of digging deeper can price
smaller farmers out of irrigation development opportunities
• Need to locate “weather-independent” groundwater resources (i.e. with
renewable recharge, supporting the entire production season)
• Need regulatory and management frameworks that enable smallholders
to benefit from irrigation beyond the near term
• Support to accessing technologies needs to improve; requiring scale
economies in equipment and other services
• Often located in closer proximity to input and output markets that
increase incentives for farmers to make a profit

10. Thank you!
McCarthy, N., C. Ringler, M.U. Agbonlahor, A.B. Pandya, B. Iyob and N. Perez. 2023. Is
irrigation fit for purpose? A review of the relationships between scheme size and
performance of irrigation systems. IFPRI Discussion Paper 2178. Washington, DC: IFPRI.
https://doi.org/10.2499/p15738coll2.13665