Impact of irrigated agriculture on households' income and food security: Evidence from the south-west region of Ethiopia

Abstract

This study was conducted to identify the determining factors of participation in irrigated farming and to estimate its impact on households' farm income and food security using cross-sectional data collected from Gimbo District, south-west Ethiopia. Primary data for this study were collected from 200 irrigator and 219 non-irrigator households using a structured questionnaire. Both descriptive and econometric analyses were employed to analyse the data using farm income, calorie intake, binary food security and dietary diversity as the outcome variables. As the propensity score matching result revealed, small-scale irrigation significantly and positively increases calorie intake, annual farm income and diet group by 320 kcal, 7653 Ethiopian birr (ETB) and 0.65 points, respectively. The results obtained from the logit model further revealed that the age of the household head, education level of the household head, distance of land from the irrigation source, land size, off-/nonfarm income, distance from the nearest market, slope of the land and access to irrigation services are the variables that were found to significantly affect participation in irrigation. Given the significant contributions of small-scale irrigation to rural households' annual farm income and food security, policy priorities should be placed on awareness creation about the relevance of irrigation technology by informing households of how much irrigator households differ from non-irrigators in terms of their annual farm income and food security. The study further recommends that the government and any other concerned bodies ought to toil in the expansion of irrigated farming and technological development of small-scale irrigation schemes.