This paper analyzes successful factors and develops theory/concept for the activation of the Water Users' Organizations (WUOs) in the Modernization of Water Management System (MWMS) project in Thailand. The main successful factors are as follows: (1) improvement of irrigation facilities with the farmers' participation;(2) providing an opportunity for discussions with farmers to enable the adjustment of water allocation through the establishment of an Integrated Water Users' Group (IWUG) in the early stages of the project; (3) holding monthly meetings of the IWUG; (4) developing, operating, and monitoring the water allocation plan in cooperation with both farmers and government officials. That is to say, initiation of the facilities' improvement and the establishment of the WUOs were performed concurrently. Moreover, the farmers participated from the beginning of the planning stage to the management stage. The MWMS project contributed to create a system that farmers can acquire and use irrigation water with reliability. Through this system, farmers could have ownership in their facilities, and then they participated in the operation and maintenance spontaneously. The most important thing is to give priority to a joint study process between the farmers and government officials for producing mutual understanding and building a good confidential relationship.K. Shioda ( ) The Modernization of Water Management System Project,
An Integrated Water User Group (IWUG) plays an important role assisting an irrigation project to control water distribution, expand the cropping area, operate and maintain irrigation facilities, and disseminate crucial information about the water situation to all farmers based on water supply from an irrigation agency. In this article, we present our analysis of the management of a newly established IWUG, based on a field survey in Thailand. We attempt to clarify the characteristics of irrigation management in the IWUG, while focusing on four functional processes: decision, operation, monitoring, and feedback. Thus, we analyze the water management structure and provide suggestions for better management of the IWUG. The main results of our analysis are as follows: (1) the current state of the IWUG 18R canal is not fully successful. There are second generation problems that need to be solved; (2) The upstream farmers dominate the use of the IWUG 18R canal because the establishment process of downstream WUGs was loosely performed because of a limited budget for on-farm irrigation development; (3) Water distribution structure and membership charging are not simple and uniform along the lateral irrigation canal because of the water availability of return flow from the downstream area. Such structure should be recognized and discussed to improve the future water distribution in relation to membership fees.
Increasing attention has been focused on promoting the physical and psychological health of non-farmers through farm activities such as home gardening and allotment gardening. In addition to these two farm activities, another farm activity -assisting with farm tasks -has been recently observed among non-farmers. Assuming that certain activities promote the health of non-farmers, specifically assisting with farm tasks near the home, allotment gardening, home gardening, walking, hiking, light physical exercise, home training with gymnastic equipment, and bowling, the preference for assisting with farm tasks compared to other farm and non-farm activities for health promotion was assessed among nonfarmers in Chiba prefecture, Japan. Based on the best-worst scaling approach, assisting with farm tasks and allotment gardening were found to be the least and second-least preferred activities, respectively, while home gardening was found to be more preferred than these two farm activities. According to our results, decreasing farm task difficulty, reducing the travel cost of visiting a farmer, and asking non-farmers to only assist with tasks that can be conducted at their own pace could increase the nonfarmers' preference for assisting with farm tasks as a method of health promotion.
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