Adoption and impacts of an irrigation technology: Evidence from household level data in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

The occurrence of frequent droughts due to low and erratic rainfall poses high uncertainty and agricultural production risks leading to wide spread poverty and food insecurity. Hence, for agricultural intensification, water is an entry point implying that irrigation development especially small holder irrigation and adoption of water saving technologies is very important. This paper aims at indentifying factors that affect farm households’ decision on whether to adopt pumps for lifting irrigation water and at making comparisons between the income of adopters and non-adopters. A logit model and an ordinary least-squares (OLS) regression are estimated using a total sample of 301 farm households to identify the factors that influence adoption of the technology and to determine impacts. Consistent with the findings of other studies, the regression results indicated that the most important determinants of the adoption of the small-scale irrigation technology include access to ground and surface water, yearly availability of water, sex of household head, level of education, access to credit and number of adult family members. The results also showed that the adoption of irrigation technologies has significant positive effect on agricultural income relative to the non- adopters.