Best bets technologies for improving agricultural water management and system intensification in Ethiopia

Significant part of Ethiopia and its agricultural production is affected by prolonged dry spells, recurrent drought, land degradation and consequential low productivity, extreme poverty and highly vulnerable. This paper first deals with the various technologies used with respect to agricultural water management, and provide description of suits of technologies that are common for agricultural water management (AWM) in Ethiopia. Secondly, it evaluates the poverty impact of the various technologies based on extensive data that are collected from 1,500 households that are currently practicing these technologies in four major regions of Ethiopia. The final part of the paper deals with the integrated interventions for improving crop water productivity through combination of technologies and system intensification, using the case study. In Ethiopia, both in-situ water management and ex-situ water management technologies are used. Among the in-situ water management soil and water conservation technologies use of terracing, stone bunds, trash lines etc are common. However, evaluation of their use on crop production and productivity impact is difficult and not well established in Ethiopia. Among the ex-situ including rain water harvesting technologies ponds, river diversion, micro dams, wells and pump irrigation are most common. Based on poverty analysis, the incidence, depth and severity of poverty is less among users of technology compared to non-users and the results are statistically robust. Accordingly, users AWM technology are 22 percent less poor compared to non-users or pure rain fed systems without AWM. The high impact technologies are found to be deep well, diversion and micro dams leading to 50%, 32%, and 25% poverty reductions respectively. The difference is mostly attributed to the scale effect and reliability of systems. AWM was best exploited when it was accompanied by improved soil fertility management interventions. Yield gains of upto 2000% were obtained when Zai pits (i.e. small water harvesting trenches) were augmented by application of chemical and organic fertilizers. Integrating legume cover crops increased yield of succeeding crop significantly while improving soil fertility and water holding capacity. The effect of fertilizer application was highly pronounced when legumes were integrated into the cropping system. Growing varietal mixtures of different height and maturity period increased crop yield by up to 60% through compensation effects and better use of water and soil nutrients over time and space. Therefore, in order to improve agricultural productivity, effectively reduce poverty it is essential that the rainfall and agricultural water is managed, accompanied by soil fertility management and agronomic practices.