Abstract:
Irrigation use has been an integral part of Ethiopian Economy and used to fix seasonality of
agricultural production. This thesis has been aimed to examine the effect of community managed
irrigation on household’s income: The case of Dire Enchini District, Oromia national regional
State, Ethiopia. The objectives of this thesis was to investigate the effect of community managed
irrigation on rural farm household’s income and to describe problems and opportunities related
to community managed irrigation in the study area. The thesis employed both primary and
secondary sources. The primary data was collected through farmers’ interviews with the help of
structured questionnaires. The data for the study was collected from six rural kebeles both
Descriptive statistics and Econometrics model were used to achieve the objective of the study.
The descriptive statistics result with respect to demographic, socio-economic and institutional
service revealed that age ,sex, farm experience, income, family size, land size, livestock, oxen,
credit, fertilizer, access to irrigation and education level of household were associate
significantly at less than 1% level of significance, whereas dependency ratio was significant at
5% level of significance. The Ordinary Least Square regression result revealed that six variables
such as Family size, Education, Land size, Livestock owned, access to credit and access to
irrigation were found significantly associated to rural farm income. The opportunities of rural
farmers owned irrigation were diversification of their income base, to reduce their vulnerability
to the seasonality of agricultural production and external shocks, reduce poverty, and increase
employment opportunity, reduce dependency and improved farm output. The challenges
investigated in the study area were marketing Problem, lack of capital to buy generators, water
pump, fuel, Fertilizer, pesticides, lack of knowledge to use the available water sustainably,
absence of effective and strong institutional support, and absence of structural change of
farming activity in the study area, transportation problem and traditional way of farming
mechanism. The Econometric model result revealed that access to irrigation was positively and
significantly related to rural farm annual income and it is advisable for Governors, Development
partners, Non-government organizations, Farmers and other concerned bodies to take their part
on irrigation development and usage to increase annual income of small holder farmer
