Small scale irrigation system for sustainable crop production based on farmers participatory approach in uganda, east africa

A case study was undertaken for a period of two years (March, 1994 to February, 1996) to examine the feasibility of installing, designing and laying out the farmers managed small scale irrigation system for sustainable crop production in Uganda (East Africa) based on participatory approch. The area used to receive bimodal rainfall giving birth of two crop season to a range of annual precipitation of about 1400 mm. Because of sharp decline of annual rainfall (about 500-700 mm/year) from the year 1988 and onwards which led the planners to emphasise the scientific approach of introducing irrigation water management for crop cultivation in order to get sustainable production. The programme consisted of bench mark survey of 27 randomly selected individual farmers having large, medium and small (150, 50-150 and 50 hectare, respectively) holding size followed by a diagnostic survey to provide technical instruction and guidelines to the individual in accordance with water resources availability and land situations and model demonstration. A reconnaissance tour programme was also undertaken to rehabilitate the days long practices and earlier efforts along with to bring the resources availability and land situations and model demonstration. A reconnaissamce tour programme was also undertaken to rehabilitate the days long practices and earlier efforts along with to bring the resource personnel together in the field of irrigation. The study over the period revealed that the farmers having abundant water resources could be grouped into three categories; (1) having continuous flow of water connected with perennial sources within the farm area; (2) having lake/river as water source with considerable area under riverbed or river basin; (3) having existing water harvesting structures fully recharged with ground water or flowing surface water and plenty of pounded water with natural springs which could be brought under irrigated agriculture. There were other two categories of farm lands where either (1) there was possibility of constructing water harvesting sturctures for recycling the stored rain water for crop cultivation and to take conservational land treatments to rainfed agriculture or (2) to improve the existing dug or tube wells to increase its capacity for livestock and domestic purposes and also to provide life saving irrigation to the standing crops on emergency basis.