Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
mixed successes of such transfers, the policy is nevertheless being pushed by
many players.
The conventional wisdom that dominated much official irrigation
development in the 1950s and 1960s was that irrigation systems required
centralized control. Water was a strategic resource over which the state
assumed ownership, and water control was a public good, which the state
provided. In that era farmer participation was limited to small-scale
traditional systems, now farmer participation and even control has become a
major component of policies for irrigation development and reform. Under
these management reforms farmer participation has moved from a peripheral
issue in irrigation management to centre stage (Meinzen-Dick, 1997).
Financial pressures to cut government subsidies for irrigation and to improve
the management and sustainability of irrigation systems have given impetus
to this trend.
Programs to promote farmer involvement range from Participatory Irrigation
Management, with farmer input as a supplement to agency management, to
Irrigation Management Transfer, in which farmers assume full responsibility
for Operation and Maintenance of specific units of systems (Meinzen-Dick,
1997). In the Philippines management transfers enabled the farmers to
mobilize resources, undertake contracts, and take on a wider variety of
irrigation tasks. The Philippines' experience has had a profound
demonstration effect. Impact evaluations showed that there were clear gains,
to the farmers as well as to the agency, which more than offset the cost of
the program (Bagadion & Korten 1991). Also in Sri Lanka participatory
management of irrigation schemes involving Farmer Organisations
demonstrated improvements in irrigation and other input supplies to their
members, but long-range funding of O&M remained problematic (Kloezen
1995). Results of management transfers which took place in Senegal have
been mixed. Pump operators responsible to farmers improved the quality of
service on many schemes, but the withdrawal of government maintenance
services for pump engines led to serious problems and sometimes even to
crop failures (Wester et al., 1995). Success stories of management transfer
which have taken place in Mexico and Mali have demonstrated the capacity
of farmer management of even large irrigation schemes (Meinzen-Dick, 1997;
Aw and Diemer, 2005).
Similar signs of these transfers have been expressed by the current
management of the Vea and Tono Irrigation Schemes in the basin. Farmers
are being organized into Farmer Organizations shifting from the village
committee system that has been applied for thirty years. The implications of
these transfers are unknown because the success of the reforms will depend
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