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Drip irrigation has long been promoted as a promising way to meet today's world water, food and poverty challenges. In most scientific and policy documents, drip irrigation is framed as a technological innovation with definitive intrinsic characteristics—that of efficiency, productivity and modernity. Based on evidence from North and West Africa as well as South Asia, we show that there are multiple actors involved in shaping this imagery, the legitimacy of which largely stems from an engineering perspective that treats technology and potential as ‘truths’ that exist independently of the context of use. Rather than ascribing the advent of drip irrigation as a successful technology to intrinsic technical features, this paper proposes to see it as grounded in the ability drip irrigation has to lend itself to multiple contexts and discourses that articulate desirable futures. We thus adopt a view of technology whereby the ‘real’ (i.e. the drip irrigation hardware) acquires its characteristics only through, and within, the network of institutions, discourses and practices that enact it. Such a perspective sheds light on the iterative alignments that take place between hardware and context and treat these as inherent features, rather than externalities, of the innovation process. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In many developing countries, milk production varies greatly according to farm size, cattle breed, and milking practices. However, production systems often are dominated by smallholder farms. Therefore, relatively small volumes of milk are delivered daily from numerous farms to intermediate cooperatives which supply industrial units. This paper argues that in such two-stage dairy chains, milk quality could be improved by focusing on farming practices rather than on the testing of individual deliveries. Indeed, it is difficult to analyze their quality due to technical, economic, and logistic limitations. The objective of this study is to link on-farm practices with milk chemical quality parameters (fat and protein) and hygienic quality criteria (Aerobic Plate Count, APC and Coliforms). Cattle management practices were monitored monthly over one year on 23 farms located on an irrigation scheme in Morocco. 276 milk samples were analyzed. The monthly variability of milk quality parameters was then characterized. Results show that average cow milk chemical parameters vary within a normal range. They remain primarily linked to the genetic type of cows, the lactation stage, and the conversion of feed concentrates' net energy into milk. Overall milk hygienic quality was poor (APC and Coliforms counts were 100 fold international norms), due essentially to a lack of hygiene and inadequate milking conditions (hands, udder, and teat washing, type of bucket used, dirtiness of cows...). It is suggested that a close monitoring of herd management practices may allow the indirect control of milk quality parameters, thereby avoiding costly analyses of numerous smallholder milk deliveries.

Socio‐hydrology advanced the field of hydrology by considering humans and their activities as part of the water cycle, rather than as external drivers. Models are used to infer reproducible trends in human interactions with water resources. However, defining and handling water problems in this way may restrict the scope of such modeling approaches. We propose an interdisciplinary socio‐hydrological approach to overcome this limit and complement modeling approaches. It starts from concrete field‐based situations, combines disciplinary as well as local knowledge on water‐society relationships, with the aim of broadening the hydrocentric analysis and modeling of water systems. The paper argues that an analysis of social dynamics linked to water is highly complementary to traditional hydrological tools but requires a negotiated and contextualized interdisciplinary approach to the representation and analysis of socio‐hydro systems. This reflection emerged from experience gained in the field where a water‐budget modeling framework failed to adequately incorporate the multiplicity of (nonhydrological) factors that determine the volumes of withdrawals for irrigation. The pathway subsequently explored was to move away from the hydrologic view of the phenomena and, in collaboration with social scientists, to produce a shared conceptualization of a coupled human‐water system through a negotiated approach. This approach changed the way hydrological research issues were addressed and limited the number of strong assumptions needed for simplification in modeling. The proposed socio‐hydrological approach led to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms behind local water‐related problems and to debates on the interactions between social and political decisions and the dynamics of these problems.

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Abstract:In this paper we draw attention to the important role technology plays in co-mediating institutions, opening up some courses of action and closing off others. Irrigation studies generally recognize the importance of institutions in making technologies work, but tend to take the precise functioning of institutions for granted. Studies that analyse institutions often do not pay enough attention to the mediating role of technology in allocating benefits, risks and burdens. We show in this paper that (irrigation) institutions are moulded by and come about through the interactions between the technical and the social in dynamic and often contested processes of adaptation to changing environments. We argue that a critical understanding of what institutions do requires more explicit and detailed attention to technologies. We base this argument on a detailed historical analysis of the functioning of Seguia Khrichfa, a farmer managed irrigation scheme in Morocco. Through time, irrigation institutions in the Seguia Khrichfa have undergone transformations to match the changing demands of a heterogeneous and 130 Saskia van der Kooij et al.growing group of irrigators, an increased command area and changing cropping patterns, and the introduction of new technologies such as drip irrigation. These institutional transformations consisted of recursive cycles of modifications in technological infrastructure and the rules of allocation and distribution. Technical adaptations prompt alterations in the water rotation schedule and vice versa. We anchor our case in descriptions of a specific technology that played a crucial role in co-steering institutional change: the introduction of open/closed gates. Our analysis of the co-evolution of society and technology in shaping institutions in the Seguia Khrichfa shows how technologies become enrolled in (sometimes implicit) processes of re-negotiating relations of authority and responsibility while obscuring institutional politics. Keywords:Critical institutionalism, drip irrigation, FMIS, Morocco, sociotechnical approach Acknowledgements: We would like to thank the water users of the Seguia Khrichfa for sharing their practices and experiences with us. We thank the canal operators and the WUA board for their patience in explaining every detail of irrigation in Khrichfa and Rachid for his translation and company. We thank 3 anonymous reviewers, Hermen Smit, Andres Verzijl and Jonas Wanvoeke for commenting on a first draft.

In Morocco, many farmers enthusiastically use drip irrigation. However, few drip irrigation systems conform to engineering standards. In a process they refer to as bricolage, farmers modify and adapt standard designs, thus creating their own technical standards. We document three instances of bricolage and show that it is a useful term to explain irrigation innovation processes. Through bricolage farmers adapt and modify the system to their needs, but also enter a process of gradual learning about what drip irrigation is and what it can achieve. Bricolage has led to the multiplication and diversification of drip systems, with different categories of users co-designing the nature and direction of change it provokes. Through bricolage, local actors effectively share responsibilities of the design process with engineers. The paper concludes that the fact that drip irrigation lends itself to bricolage helps explain its success as an innovation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. RÉSUMÉAu Maroc, de nombreux agriculteurs utilisent l'irrigation au goutte à goutte. Pourtant, peu de systèmes de goutte à goutte sont conformes aux normes fixées par des ingénieurs. Dans un processus qu'ils qualifient de bricolage, les agriculteurs adaptent les installations, et créent des normes locales. Nous documentons trois instances de bricolage, et montrons que le terme bricolage est utile pour expliquer le processus d'innovation en irrigation. Le bricolage a permis la conception de systèmes plus adaptés aux conditions locales, mais permet aussi un apprentissage graduel de la technique, et plus généralement, d'apprivoiser le changement. Les acteurs locaux ont ainsi pris le contrôle de l'innovation et prennent des responsabilités dans des domaines que l'on pensait réservés aux ingénieurs.