Impact assessment of adoption of water saving irrigation interventions on the socio-economic development of small farmers in district Faisalabad

The irrigation water-saving technologies mainly include watercourse improvement, improved farm layout, laser land leveling and bed planting of wheat. To evaluate the impact of adoption of water saving irrigation interventions on the socio-economic development of small farmers at small farms, Faisalabad district was selected as study area. It consists of five tehsils: Faisalabad, Jaranwala, Sammundri, Chak Jhumra and Tandlianwala out of which three tehsils (Jaranwala, Sammundri and Chak Jhumra) were randomly selected. A list of 25 watercourses where maximum water saving interventions were applied, was separately prepared from each tehsil. A sample of ten improved watercourses where maximum water saving irrigation interventions (5 or 6 out of 10) were applied, were selected using randomizer.com pathway from each tehsil. Thus a total of 30 improved watercourses were taken. From these 30 watercourses, 9 small farmers (having landholding less than 12.5 acres) were selected randomly: 3 each from head, middle and tail, respectively. So a sample of 270 respondents was selected. Quantitative data were collected during the year 2010 and analyzed using the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS). Descriptive statistics, including frequencies percentages, means and standard deviations, were used to summarize different variables. Overall results showed that adoption of water saving interventions affected the socio economic status of farmers. Further, the extent of observed changes after using water saving interventions in increase in income, better care of child health, increase in cattle, more entertainment for children, more use of fruit and increase in electricity bill was above an average extent with 69.6, 67.0, 65.2 and 59.3, 59.3 and 58.1 percent respectively, and use of taxi for traveling, better living standard and use of gas cylinders are on average extent with 54.8, 51.5 and 50.7 percent respectively.