The impact of small-scale irrigation on household food security: The case of SNNP of Ethiopia

Abstract

Even though Ethiopia is endowed with natural resource, it is one of the poorest country in world. The reason for this is maluses of the natural resource and dependence on traditional and rain feed agriculture. Small scale irrigation is applied in Ethiopia more than 5 decades and in SNNP region 3 decades ago. This study was conducted in SNNP region with 60 small scale irrigation users and 343 non users. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of small scale irrigation on household on food security. To analyze the data descriptive statistics like chi2 for categorical variables and t-test continuous predictor variables was used. Propensity Score matching model was used to analyze the impact of the small scale irrigation on food security of the house hold. Based on this study application of small scale irrigation in the study area does not contribute to be food secured. This may be due to the region is getting high rainfall relative to other regions like Afar, Somali and Tigray region. The farmers does not want to west their time on irrigation activities doe to plenty of rainfall and precipitation. On the other hand, most of the farmers staple food is depend on Inset (falls banana) which does not need irrigation. Based on this study we recommend that, irrigation activities should be applied in areas by which rainfall is scarce like the regions Tigray, Afar and Somali region by which rain is scarce.

Keywords: food index, Irrigation, PSM model, SNNP region

DOI: 10.7176/ISDE/12-1-02

Publication date: January 31^st 2021