Economics of irrigated crops in Kinyope and Kitere irrigation schemes in Lindi and Mtwara districts

Abstract

Governments in many developing countries including Tanzania are promoting irrigation as a response to food insecurity. A current initiative in Tanzania for instance, is to scale up annual paddy irrigation production to 2 million tones in 2018 from the present 8 x 10 5 tones. Studies conducted in Ruvuma and Mbeya regions by the World Bank (WB) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) shows improvement in irrigation efficiency and crop yield. The question whether these research findings hold true for Kinyope and Kitere irrigation schemes or profitability of these two schemes had also increased, is the motivation behind this study. The main objective is to investigate the economic performance of Kinyope and Kitere irrigation schemes found in Lindi and Mtwara districts. Farm Enterprise Budget analysis was employed to determine the profitability of major crops grown in the schemes. Residual Imputation Method has been used to evaluate economic value of irrigation water. To capture the effects of institutional and technical factors on paddy yields in the schemes, multiple regression model has been estimated. The results show that the average profitability realised is Tshs 1 044 207/ha. Moreover the results show that the average value of irrigated water found to be 14 Tshs/m 3 and that the estimated average water productivity for paddy is 0.04 kg/m 3 . Regression analysis results revealed that at P<0.05 paddy yield is positively influenced by cultivated plot size, capital invested, irrigation water availability and credits accessibility to the farmers in the irrigation schemes. From these findings it is concluded that economic performance of Kitere and Kinyope irrigation schemes is good though relatively lower as found by WB and IFAD in Mbeya and Ruvuma. It is therefore recommended that stakeholders should jointly work together to ensure that irrigation water is available throughout the year and that farmers are provided with cheap credits for them to expand farm sizes, purchase inputs and hire labour at a proper time.