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Making the user visible: analysing irrigation practices and farmers’ logic to explain actual drip irrigation performance

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Abstract

The actual performance of drip irrigation (irrigation efficiency, distribution uniformity) in the field is often quite different from that obtained in experimental stations. We developed an approach to explain the actual irrigation performance of drip irrigation systems by linking measured performances to farmers’ irrigation practices, and these practices to the underlying logic of farmers who operate these systems. This approach was applied to 22 farms in Morocco. Four sets of variables helped explain the gap between the actual irrigation performance and the performance obtained in experimental conditions: (1) farmers have agro-economic motivations or want to improve their social status, and for them, irrigation performance is at best an intermediate objective. (2) Irrigation performance is not a static value, but a rapidly evolving process, related to the (perceived) ability of farmers to change irrigation practices and renew irrigation equipment, but also to farmers’ aspirations. (3) The social network of farmers, supporting the introduction and use of drip irrigation, determines how farmers may share experience, information and know-how related to drip irrigation. (4) Today, there is no social pressure to irrigate carefully to save water; only the state explicitly links the use of drip irrigation to saving water. Making the drip user visible in research and policy studies would lead to more realistic assessments of irrigation performance and draw the attention of policy makers to the actual conditions in which drip irrigation is used, and as a consequence help incorporate ‘saving water’ as an objective for drip irrigation users.

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Notes

  1. Official Moroccan standards (2007) also refer to these authors, when they advise that drip irrigation equipment should guarantee a DU of 90 %.

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Acknowledgments

This research was carried out in the framework of the Groundwater Arena project (ANR-CEP S 11/09), the NWO-MVI project ‘Drip Irrigation Realities in Perspective’, and the Daima project (AIRD/JEAI). The authors want to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CIRAD, UMR G-EAU, 34398, Montpellier, France

    Maya Benouniche & Marcel Kuper

  2. Institut Agronomique et Vétérinaire Hassan II, Rabat, Morocco

    Maya Benouniche, Marcel Kuper & Ali Hammani

  3. Water Resources Management, Environmental Science Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Harm Boesveld

Authors
  1. Maya Benouniche
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  2. Marcel Kuper
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  3. Ali Hammani
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  4. Harm Boesveld
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maya Benouniche.

Additional information

Communicated by J. Kijne.

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Benouniche, M., Kuper, M., Hammani, A. et al. Making the user visible: analysing irrigation practices and farmers’ logic to explain actual drip irrigation performance. Irrig Sci 32, 405–420 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00271-014-0438-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00271-014-0438-0

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