Shifting from farmer-managed to community-managed irrigation has made farming in Nepal much more productive. Empowered water users associations in mountainous rural Nepal upgraded the irrigation system, which increased water flow into the fields and provided farms with electricity. Greater agricultural productivity is expected to uplift the lives of poor farmers.
Nepal has been struggling with poverty the past decades. About 39% of its population live in poverty, most of whom live in rural areas. They are heavily dependent on agriculture, and direly need support. The landless and the minority farmers comprise a large part of the poor and they have no easy access to irrigation.
Because farms are hardly irrigated, productivity is low in rural Nepal. Much of what has been produced are at subsistence levels. Other factors aggravate the situation, such as difficult terrain conditions, vulnerability to natural calamities, limited roads, lack of technology, and weak government support. These have made rural growth erratic, consequently making food production in the country unstable.
Interventions
Irrigation is critical to agricultural productivity. Nepal has been working on increasing access to irrigation and has in fact worked with ADB since 1995 to improve its irrigation systems. In 2004, together with ADB, it embarked on the still ongoing Community Managed Irrigated Agriculture Sector Project. Cofinanced with the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, the project aims to upgrade small and medium farmer-managed irrigation systems in Nepal’s Central and Eastern Development Regions.
The interventions initiated by this project aimed to ultimately uplift the lives of poor farmers and empower them. They improved irrigation systems with the mindset that these facilities are part of the poor’s capital, and thus a resource they can competently manage. The project tapped multifunctional water users’ associations (WUAs), made up of smallholder farmers who have proven track record in building farmer-managed irrigation systems. It enhanced the WUAs’ capacity to manage irrigation systems and improved their cropping practices. Simultaneously, the project upgraded the irrigation system by strengthening the canals with concrete and making other improvements that increased the flow of water to farms while preventing leaks.
Results
To date, the project has upgraded 111 farmer-managed irrigation systems, providing water to about 16,000 hectares of irrigated land in 35 districts of central and eastern Nepal. Over 178,000 farmers benefitted from this rehabilitation. They now enjoy water 12 months a year for irrigation, which helped increased crop yield and crop intensity.
The rehabilitated irrigation system also brought a bonus to farmers—the increased water running through the irrigation canals provides enough electricity for farmers to power mills used to grind grains and husk rice and to light up their households.