Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
introduced technologies have been adopted by the users. This chapter seeks
to investigate the trend of the upscaling of these technologies and also the
factors (physical, technological, social and economical) that have contributed
to these developments. The chapter goes further to identify some triggers
and interventions that can possibly influence future trends of irrigation
development in the study area.
The aim of this chapter is to improve our understanding of what sustainable
irrigation development would mean in the context of the White Volta sub-
basin.
The objective is first to establish the historical trend of irrigation in the
study area and identify the factors (physical, technological, social and
economical) and interventions that have influenced this trend. Second, the
study seeks to project the observed trend into the future, taking into account
the irrigation potential in the three catchments, possible future interventions,
and policy-related issues.
7.2 M
ETHODOLOGY
The study was conducted in three catchments of the White Volta sub-basin,
being the Anayari, Atankwidi and Yarigatanga catchments where several
irrigation technologies have been observed. Data used for the study were
obtained from: farmer interviews, institutional interviews (Ministry of Food
and Agriculture (MOFA) and Ghana Irrigation Development Authority
(GIDA)), field surveys and observations, ground-truthing; research reports,
project and country reports and satellite images (2003, 2005, 2007 and 2010).
The first objective of this chapter, the study of historical trends of irrigation
development, involved a combination of data and satellite image analyses.
The analysis was based on information on irrigation development in the
study area from the 1950s to the present.
The image analysis used a series of satellite images of the study area in
combination with ground-truthed data and field observations. Different types
of satellite images for this analysis were available for the study area. These
include Land-sat (from 1979 to present), Aster images (from 1990 to present)
and spot-images (from 1990 to present). Due to the resolution of some of
these image types (Land-sat: 30mx30m; Aster: 20mx20m and Spot:
10mx10m or 5mx5m) and the relatively small sizes of most small-scale
irrigation systems (0.01-0.7ha), it was impossible to detect most small-scale
irrigation activities in the study area with the Land-sat and Aster images.
Annual irrigation activities are intensive between late December and late
February, thus satellite images for irrigation analysis have been taken within
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