The Effect of Community Managed Irrigation on Household‘s Income: The case of Dire Enchini Oromia, Ethiopia

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