Beyond the Promises of Technology: A Review of the Discourses and Actors Who Make Drip Irrigation

Abstract

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.

Farmers’ Logics in Engaging With Projects Promoting Drip Irrigation Kits in Burkina Faso

“…This form of drip irrigation appealed to the Burkina Faso government and various development agencies as a technology holding the promises of efficient water and labor management, improved nutrition and food security, poverty alleviation, and women's empowerment (for a description of the rationale to promote micro-drip kits in Sub-Saharan Africa see Venot et al 2014). This enthusiasm underpinned a multiplication of projects centered on the promotion of micro-drip kits, involving numerous development actors.…”

Liberation or Anarchy? The Janus Nature of Groundwater Use on North Africa’s New Irrigation Frontiers

“…In parallel, the agricultural sector started several subsidy programmes for water saving irrigation technologies, especially drip irrigation. The amount of water saved as a result of these programmes has rarely been evaluated ), but the programmes were probably essential in providing agriculture with a more positive image of "efficiency, productivity and modernity" (Venot et al 2014). Through the "alignment of farmers' interests and those of the political class" (Allan 2007), solutions are once again being sought in supply management approaches (desalination, inter-basin transfers) or in technological inventions, such as water saving irrigation technologies.…”

Effects of drip irrigation promotion policies on water use and irrigation costs in Valencia, Spain

“…These authors have warned of the danger of adopting a myopic view that fails to consider the impact of related factors or the required scale of analysis. This is due to the fact that many of the aforementioned works have been developed experimentally at plot level or from a technology-centred perspective, considering drip irrigation implementation as a black-box problem, frequently leaving out many influential factors (López-Gunn et al, 2012b;Venot et al, 2014). Similarly, after a critical and exhaustive literature review, Van der Kooij et al (2013, p.108) stated that "there is no conclusive scientific evidence to support a general belief in drip irrigation as a water saving device or as a tool to help solve the water crisis" and demanded caution against the massive installation of drip irrigation, because national or regional savings cannot be based on results only obtained at plot level.…”

“…This limited consideration of the sociotechnological change attached to drip irrigation implementation (López-Gunn et al, 2012b;Van der Kooij et al, 2013;Garb & Friedlander, 2014;Venot et al, 2014) has caused unforeseen effects for both users and planners, resulting in successful experiences in some cases and resounding failures in others.…”