Overview of smallholder irrigation schemes in South Africa: Relationship between farmer crop management practices and performance

Abstract

Irrigated agriculture accounts for almost 30% of total crop production and is the single largest user of 
water in South Africa. The country is water-scarce, and, although water consumption through irrigation 
has decreased from 80 to about 50% over the past 25 years, the need to improve water use efficiency in 
irrigation farming is more imperative than ever. Generally, smallholder irrigation schemes (SIS) in South 
Africa have performed poorly and have not delivered on their development objectives of increasing crop 
production and improving rural livelihoods. The poor performance of many SIS in terms of productivity 
and economic impact has been largely attributed to socio-economic, political, climatic, edaphic and 
design factors, as well as lack of farmer participation. Research and expenditure has tended to 
concentrate on rehabilitation of irrigation infrastructure, but evidence indicate low yield levels and 
limited knowledge of crop production among farmers as probably the main reasons for the failure of 
many SIS in South Africa. The tendency to focus on infrastructure has often yielded little and proved to 
be fruitless because the human capital was not developed to effectively utilise and maintain the 
infrastructure. This indicates that farmer practice may actually be constraining performance in spite of 
the state of irrigation infrastructure. It is therefore recommended that crop production approaches 
including farmer training be considered alongside all other issues during revitalisation of SIS to 
improve on performance.