Contribution of Small Scale Irrigation to Households ’ Income and Food Security : Evidence from Ketar Irrigation Scheme , Arsi Zone , Oromiya Region , Ethiopia

Livelihoods of the rural people of Ethiopia depend on agriculture. However, erratic nature of rain and prevalence of drought in the country make agricultural production a challenge. To counter this problem, use of the available water resource for irrigation development is the most promising option. Ketar small scale irrigation scheme is found in Ketar-Genet Peasant association, Tiyo District, Arsi zone, established with the aim of improving level of income and food security of beneficiary households. Nevertheless, no previous study was conducted on the contribution of the scheme to income and food security of households. Thus, this study was conducted with the objective to investigate the contribution of small-scale irrigation to rural household income and food security. The required data set for the study were gathered primarily through survey method from 130 randomly selected sample households both from irrigation users and non-users (65 each). Structured interview was used as data collection method. Both descriptive and inferential statistical methods were used to analyze the required data. Results of the study revealed that, income from irrigated vegetable crops contributed for 21.38% of the total annual crop income for the irrigation users; irrigation users were in better position in terms of livestock (7.58 to 4.38 TLU) and oxen ownership (1.78 to 1.12 TLU); participation in credit (52 to 23%) and the use of extension advisory services. Results of the logit model indicated that age of household head, education level of household head, size of the cultivated land, number of oxen, livestock holding (TLU), income from livestock and irrigation found to be influencing household food security at 1, 5, and 10% significant levels. In general, the empirical analysis confirms that small-scale irrigation development would have positive impact on income and food security of beneficiary households. Thus, the concerned development partners being governmental or non-governmental should join hands to promote the development of such small scale irrigation schemes.


INTRODUCTION
Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa.The incidence of poverty stands at 30% at the national level.Incidence of poverty is higher for rural areas, than urban areas at 33 and 29%, respectively.Agriculture plays an important role in the development of the national economy, contributing about 50% of the gross domestic product (GDP, and employs 85 % of the population (FAO, 2012).
Combinations of natural and manmade factors have resulted in serious and growing food insecurity problem in many parts of the country.Currently, about fifteen million people are facing food insecurity, either chronic or transitory in nature.About five to six million people are chronically food insecure every year.There are people who do not have the capacity to produce or buy enough food to meet their annual food needs even under normal weather and market conditions.The remaining ten million are vulnerable, with a weak resilience to any shock.Under any emergency circumstances, the likelihood of these people falling back into food insecurity is high (FAO, 2012).
In order to address food insecurity of the rapidly growing population in Ethiopia, the current agricultural area assumed to increase by 25%, while average yields are assumed to increase by one-half by 2020 (Ehui et al., 2002).Food insecurity often turns into famine with the slightest adverse climatic incident.The challenge, therefore, is how to meet the increasing demand given the existing but dwindling natural resources and worsening climatic conditions.Hence, there should be ways to use improved technologies of agricultural production to enhance the economic, social, and institutional conditions necessary for increased agricultural production and productivity (Mekuria, 2003).
The challenge posed by recurrent drought, declining agricultural production at household level and ever increasing population pressure necessitated close attention to water resource management and small-scale irrigation development (Hune, 2003).The country may not be able to meet its large food deficit through rain-fed agriculture alone (Desta, 2004).Irrigation development has been given priority in the Agricultural Development Led Industrialization (ADLI) strategy of Ethiopia.Under the program, irrigation is planned to be introduced and implemented in areas where agro-ecological conditions are in harmony with the interventions (GoE, 2001).
On top of this, the Ethiopian Government, in collaboration with its development partners, has developed a Food Security Programme (FSP) within the framework of the Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to Eradicate Poverty (PASDEP), which is a guiding strategic framework for the five-year period 2005 to 2010.In the PASDEP and the FSP, due emphasis has been given to developing and using the huge potential of the country for irrigated agriculture to produce food crops as well as raw materials needed for agro-industries (FAO, 2006).
Irrigation development is being promoted by government and non-government organizations as one of the development strategies contributing to the overall agricultural development of the country in general, and to rural household food security in particular.Though, irrigated agriculture has positive impact on household food security and income (Fuad, 2002;Desta, 2004) there are cases where irrigated agriculture failed to achieve intended impact on household wellbeing (Quasem, 1994).
The contribution of farmer based small-scale irrigation for semi-cash cropping has not been studied, though such schemes cover more than 40% of the irrigated land in the country (Dessalegn, 1999).Seleshi et al. (2005) indicated the need for undertaking impact assessment of small-scale irrigation particularly on production and productivity of rural households.
Oromia is one of the nine regional states in the country with its surface area of 359.620 square kilometres, constituting about one third of the total area of the country.The problem of food insecurity has increasingly become worse in the low land areas of the region, which represent about 30 percent of the total land mass.Coping mechanisms of pastoralists and agro-pastoralists in these areas are so fragile that minor change in rainfall distribution often results in famine (OIDA, 2004).The same source indicates that, the region has about 1.7 million hectares of land suitable for irrigation.Because of the growing concern over food security and an increasing trend in the occurrence of drought in the region, the regional government has planned to utilize the exiting irrigation potential.
Ketar irrigation scheme is found in Tiyo district in Ketar-Genet peasant association.The scheme has been established in order to address household food insecurity and income problems.However, an in-depth analysis of the contribution of the irrigation to this effect has not been studied so far.Therefore, this research was conducted to assess contribution of the small-scale irrigation to the livelihoods of the beneficiary rural households in terms of improving income and food security.
The study also envisaged to generate empirical evidences on the role of small-scale irrigation in enhancing rural household income and food security.At the same time to contribute to the knowledge and understanding of development actors in their future planning and development of small-scale irrigation schemes.Hence, the objectives of this study is to assess households' food security status, to assess the contribution of irrigated agriculture to household's crop income and food security and to identify the major determinants of households' food security in the study area.

Description of the study area
Tiyo district is one of the districts in Arsi Zone, Oromia Regional state.The district is bordered to the south by Munesa, to the west by Ziway Dugda, to the northeast by Hetosa, and to the southeast by Digeluna Tijo districts.The zonal capital of the district is Asella, which is found 175 km away from the capital Addis Ababa.Mount Chilalo is the highest point in this district.Major rivers in the district include the Ketar, Kulumsa, Gonde, Dosha and Welkesa.A survey of the land in this distric shows that 40% is arable or cultivable (32% was planted with cereals), 23.1% pasture, 8.7% forest, and the remaining 28.2% is considered swampy, mountainous or otherwise unusable.
The district has a tropical heavy and erosive rainfall as well as cool to moderate climate.The altitude of the area ranges from 2240 to 2740m above sea level, the annual means temperature ranges from 15 to 22°C, and the mean annual rainfall ranges from 900 to 1100mm.The rainfall pattern is bimodal which are short rainy season (Belg) and long rainy season (Meher).
According to CSA (2011), the total population of the district is 86.727 of which 43.443 are male and 43.284 are female.From the population of the district, about 80.204 or 92.5% lives in rural areas and the remaining proportion lives in urban areas.Farmers in the area practice mixed type of farming.Major crops grown in the district are cereals (barley, wheat, teff, and maize), pulses (bean and pea), oil crops (linseeds and rape seeds) and vegetables (potato, tomato, onion and cabbage).In the district, Ketar-Genet Peasant association is known as rain shortage area, by which farmers residing in the water bank of Ketar River are benefiting from the irrigation schemes.
Ketar River is the major source for Ketar irrigation scheme which covers 367 ha of land.The irrigation scheme is located in Ketar-Genet Peasant association which is found 39 km away from the zonal capital Asella.

Sampling procedure
For this study, 130 sample households were used (65 households from users of the irrigation scheme and 65 households from nonusers of the irrigation schemes).

Method of data collection
Data were collected both from primary and secondary sources.

Descriptive statistics
Mean, standard deviation, frequency distribution and percentage were used to examine and understand the socio economic situations of the sample respondents through comparing irrigation users and non-users.The food items consumed by sample households' calorie content was computed using calorie conversion table of EHNRI (1968), and household members were also converted to their adult equivalent.Then, the amount of total calories consumed by each sample household was computed and divided by 14 days to get per day calorie consumed by household.This figure was divided to the Adult Equivalent (AE) of respective households and which finally gave the amount of calorie available per AE for each sampled household.Thus, those households greater than the minimum amount of calorie required (2100kcal) was put under food secured otherwise not food secured (Hoddinott, 2001).The situation of household food security within irrigation users and non-users was also seen independently.In order to calculate rate of return to land management of rain fed and irrigated vegetable crops grown by irrigation users 2012/2013 production season, partial budgeting technique was applied which used plot level input and output data collected for the crops.

Econometric model
Logistic model is used to identify the determinants of food security, and to assess their relative importance determining the probability of being in food secure.The functional form of logit model is specified as follows, Gujarati (1995): (1) For ease of exposition, we write (1) as: (2) The probability that a given household is food secure is expressed by (2) while, the probability for food insecure is: (3) Therefore, we can write: (4) Now, (Pi/1-Pi) is simply the odds ratio in favour of food security.The ratio of the probability that a household will be food secure to the probability that it will be food insecure.Finally, taking the natural log of equation ( 4) we obtain: (5) Where Pi = is a probability of being food secure ranges from 0 to 1. Zi = is a function of n explanatory variables (x) which is also expressed as: (6) ß 0 is an intercept ß 1, ß 2 ------ß n are slopes of the equation in the model Li = is log of the odds ratio, which is not only linear in X i but also linear in the parameters.Xi = is vector of relevant household characteristics If the disturbance term (U i ) is introduced, the logit model becomes ( 7)

Household food security (HHFSE)
This is a dichotomous dependent variable in the model taking value of 1 if a household is food secure and 0, otherwise.

Independent variables
Various socioeconomic and household characteristic variables are expected to affect household food security in the study area.The major explanatory variables hypothesized to influence household food secure situation are presented in Table 1.

Households characteristics
Age composition of the Household head: Farmers acquire experience and knowledge through devoting their time to farming activities.Therefore, higher age means better farming experience, and accordingly better condition in terms of food security and they become more risk avert.households' dependency ratio falls within 0 to 1 (Table 3) indicating that economically active member of a household is expected to support at least one member of the family.The result is almost similar for irrigation users (about 52%) and non-users (about 51%) that is, the dependency ratio range is 0 to 1.The mean dependency ratio for irrigation users and non-users was found to be 1.22 and 1.25 with standard deviation of .70 and .55respectively.The overall mean of dependency ratio of sample households was 1.23.The t-test result shows that there is no statistically significant difference in mean value dependency ratio between the two groups.A household with more productive labour force compared to the active age shows a high dependency ratio, and it is more likely to be food insecure (Bigsten et al., 2002) (Table 3).

Education level of household heads:
The average number of years of formal schooling completed by the sample farmers was 1.62 (Table 4).Among the sample farmers, the majority (67 %) were illiterate, while only about 11% could read and write.The rest attended formal elementary or junior secondary school.None of the household heads had attended school beyond grade 8. Descriptive statistics result revealed that, there is no statistically significant mean difference between the two groups in their education level (Table 4).

Labor availability
As shown in Table 5, the mean available labor in man equivalent was 2.14 with the minimum and maximum being 1 and 5.1 respectively.The labor availability between irrigation users and non-users differ in that users had large labor endowment (2.35 Man -Equivalent) than non-users (1.94 Man Equivalent).The result of test statistic is significant at 1%, which indicated that there is significant difference between the two groups in terms of availability of labor.This shows that irrigation user households' have much household labor to undertake their farming activities as compared to non-user households' (Table 5).6 shows that, nearly 15% of the respondents have farmland size of 1.5 hectare or less while 53% of the respondents own land within 1.51 to 3  hectare limits.Households who own land size of more than 3 hectare accounted for 32.3 %.Irrigation users have mean land size of 2.96 hectare whereas the nonusers have 2.71 ha with the mean difference of .25 and standard division of 1.03.The statistical test indicated that there is no statically significant difference between the two groups.However, irrigation user households' are using more chemical fertilizer on their land and continuously using extension advisory services as compared to the non-users.

Livestock ownership
The result on Table 7 shows that mean livestock ownership by irrigation users is almost double than that of non-users.The number of farmers who own more than 8 TLU was 31 for users and only 9 for non-users.This shows that, irrigation user households have large number of livestock as compared to non-users.A t-test result reveals that, there is a statistically significant difference between users and non-users in the livestock ownership, at a probability level of less that 1%.

Oxen ownership
Table 8 shows that 14.6% of the sample households were without oxen, and about 35% of them owned only 1 ox and 50% owned 2 or more.The mean size of oxen  ownership between irrigation users is larger (1.78) than that of non-users (1.12) and the overall mean being 1.45.
There is a statistically significant difference in oxen ownership between the means of irrigation users and non-users at 1% significant level.Oxen power is the main source of traditional means to cultivate land in Ethiopia.It allows effective utilization of land and labor resources where family labor could be spread over peak and slack periods to carry out both farm and non-farm activities.
Households with relatively larger number of oxen can perform better on their farm and achieve sustainable food security.

Credit services
The majority of irrigation participants (66.7%) reflected that their participation in credit during the last five years increased.However, in case of non-users this was 44.6%.Table 9 shows the result.Credit serves as a means to boost production and expand income generating activities (DIAGNE, 1998;DEVEREUX, 2001).Thus, a household which has access to credit does initiate investment in farm and non-farm activities and achieve food security.

Fertilizer use
Use of fertilizer for crop production plays an important role for production and productivity.In the study area, use of fertilizer is a very important input for the production of crops.Irrigation by its very nature demands high use of improved agricultural inputs like fertilizer in order to produce high value crops like vegetables.In most cases, availability of irrigation encourages farmers to use fertilizer for production of high value crops, which fetches high prices and cover incurred costs (Hazell and Ramasamy, 1991).Analysis of fertilizer use by the two groups indicates that, the mean amount of fertilizer use was almost three fold for users than non-users of the irrigation (Table 10).The mean difference was highly significant at 1% probability level.

Extension service
Provision of extension service to farmers play important role in terms of creating knowledge and skills in using improved agricultural inputs.The frequency of using an extension service in case of users and non-users of irrigation differs.One of the areas where extension service was given was in area of irrigation development where irrigation users benefit out of it.Frequency of extension service was measured and the results are indicated in Table 11.

Household income
As shown in Table 12, irrigation users have generated mean income of Ethiopian Birr 2106.66, the maximum  being Birr 6510.00 and a minimum was Birr 645.The majority of irrigation users' (58.5%) income fall in the first category (Birr 645 to 1500), and it is only 20% of the farmers who managed to generate income with the range of Birr 3171 to 6510.As shown in Table 13, sample households' income from rain fed crop production is indicated.
From the table, it is possible to note that the majority of the sample households' income was found within income range of Birr 235 to 1200.In terms of mean income, irrigation users were in better position, (since they are using chemical fertilizer and properly used extension advisory services), and the test statistic revealed that there is significant difference between the two groups in their mean income.
Farmers also generate income from livestock in different forms.As shown in Table 14, income from livestock for sampled households differs between irrigation users and non-users.In both cases, the majority of households of users (87.7 %) and non-users (93.8%) fall in the first income range, which is Birr 34 to 1500 /year.The result of test statistic indicated that there is significant difference between the mean incomes of the two groups with irrigation users having higher livestock income than nonusers.The difference shows that, irrigation user households' have better access to get feed by planting fodder seeds on the marginal areas of their farm and applying proper livestock husbandry system by following the advice of agricultural extension agents.

Food security status of sample households
Food security status of sampled households is computed with the conversion of the weekly consumption data into kilocalorie using the nationally standardized food composition table manual (Ehnri, 1997).The converted data were divided into household Adult Equivalent (AE).
Following this, the amount of energy in kilocalorie (kcal) available for the household was recorded.Then after, the results obtained were compared with the minimum subsistence requirement per Adult Equivalent (AE) per day (which is 2,100 kcal).Households which consume below this minimum requirement were categorized as   food insecure and those households which consume above the threshold were considered as food secure.
The food security situation between irrigation users and nonusers was different.The irrigation users were in better position than that of non-users.About 65 % of irrigation users were food secured where this was only 29% for non-users.The statistical test indicates that there is significant difference between users and non-users with regard to food security situation (Table 15).
Further analysis was made to see the position of sample households with regard to calorie consumption.To this effect, the data on household calorie consumption per Adult Equivalent was categorized taking 2100kcl as a cut of point.Those households more than this value are food secured but with different value and less are food insecure (Table 16).Out of 69 sample households identified as food insecure, kilocalorie (kcal) consumption of 37.7% falls between 287.39 to 1500 Kcal.If we see the two groups separately, 26.2% of irrigation users and 49.2% of non-users were found in this category.

Contribution of Irrigation to crop Income
From the data collected, it is possible to note that in the study area, sample households were primarily engaged in production of wheat, teff and potato under rain-fed agriculture through allocating large proportion of land for production of these crops.
Therefore, these crops were considered for estimation  of net return.In the same manner, the data collected shows that, vegetables grown during the study period (2013/2014 production season) by the irrigation users were onion and tomato.Therefore, onion and tomato were the crops grown under irrigation and included in this analysis.Table 17 indicates crop based information on input costs and returns.The figures in the table are mean values.The mean gross revenue generated by the farmers from rainfed crops was Birr 6303.32,where the gross revenue from teff accounted high (47.80%)followed by wheat (47.77%).Mean gross revenue generated by farmers from irrigated crop was Birr 3687.52;where onion contributed high (58.92%).

Food security determinants
The logit model result (Table 18) indicated that coefficients of seven variables were significantly differentfrom zero and found to affect food security status of the households in the study area.However, all variables have showed the expected sign.Age of household head (Age) and income from irrigation (Irrincome) were significant at the 1% level; education of household head (Education) and cultivated land size (Landcult) were significant at the 5% significant level.Oxen ownership (Oxen), livestock ownership (Livestock) and income fromlivestock (Liveincome) were significant at 10% probability level.

CONCLUSION
The research was conducted to assess whether the irrigation scheme has had the desirable impact.The empirical analysis used household level data gathered from 130 randomly selected households through survey

Table 1 .
Hypothesized independent variables and expected sign.

Table 2 .
Age distribution of sample household heads.

Table 1
Household members aged below 15 and above 64 are considered as dependents and dividing it by household members whose age is between 15 to 64 resulted in dependency ratio.The distribution of dependency ratio for sample households showed that about 52% of sample

Table 3 .
Dependency ratio of sample households.

Table 4 .
Education status of sample household heads.

Table 5 .
Labor availability of sample households.

Table 6 .
Cultivated land by sample households.

Table 8 .
Oxen ownership by sample households.

Table 9 .
Use of credit service by sample households.

Table 10 .
Fertilizer use by sample households.

Table 11 .
Extension service by sample household.

Table 12 .
Annual income generated by sample households from the irrigated crops.

Table 13 .
Income generated by sample households from rain fed crops.

Table 14 .
Income generated by sample households from livestock.

Table 15 .
Food security status of sample households.

Table 16 .
Households' calorie consumption per AE Table. 17.Net return from rain fed and irrigated crops (household average).