Transdisciplinary Innovation in Irrigated Smallholder Agriculture in Africa

Abstract

Boosting the productivity of smallholder farming systems continues to be a major need in Africa. Challenges relating to how to improve irrigation are multi‐factor and multisectoral, and they involve a broad range of actors who must interact to reach decisions collectively. We provide a systematic reflection on findings from the research project EAU4Food, which adopted a transdisciplinary approach to irrigation for food security research in five case studies in Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, South Africa and Tunisia. The EAU4Food experiences emphasize that actual innovation at irrigated smallholder farm level remains limited without sufficient improvement of the enabling environment and taking note of the wider political economy environment. Most project partners felt at the end of the project that the transdisciplinary approach has indeed enriched the research process by providing different and multiple insights from actors outside the academic field. Local capacity to facilitate transdisciplinary research and engagement with practitioners was developed and could support the continuation and scaling up of the approach. Future projects may benefit from a longer time frame to allow for deeper exchange of lessons learned among different stakeholders and a dedicated effort to analyse possible improvements of the enabling environment from the beginning of the research process. © 2020 The Authors. Irrigation and Drainage published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Commission for Irrigation and Drainage

A Comparative Analysis of Yield Gaps and Water Productivity on Smallholder Farms in Ethiopia, South Africa and Tunisia

“…A detailed description of the sites can be found in Froebrich et al . (, this issue). The physiographic, climatic and farming characteristics of the study sites are summarized in Table I.…”

“…The physiographic, climatic and farming characteristics of the study sites are summarized in Table I. At each site, different agricultural innovations were introduced that resulted from the transdisciplinary co‐design of innovations (Froebrich et al, , this issue). The sites in Giyani and Gumselasa used field experiments to demonstrate increased crop yields and WPs through improved farming practices, whilst the site in Brahmi adopted field surveys and modelling simulations to determine crop yields and WP (Table I).…”

Participation in a Complex and Conflicting Context: Implementing a Shared Diagnosis in a Northern Tunisia Irrigation Scheme

“…The EAU4Food project ‘European Union and African Union cooperative research to increase Food production in irrigated farming systems in Africa' placed great emphasis on participatory research for identifying innovations that target local constraints of food production which will be implemented with research (Froebrich et al, ). The participatory process is based on two kinds of multi‐stakeholder platform (MSP) that partially overlap.…”

“…It is therefore crucial to promote innovations to improve both productivity and sustainability of irrigated farming systems. But this is a complex issue and requires multidisciplinary approaches (Froebrich et al, ) and cannot be solved simply by farmers, managers, extension workers, researchers or policy makers. Decision‐making processes are jointly influenced by these different categories of stakeholders and require that appropriate participatory approaches are developed (Von Korff et al, ).…”

Assessing Environmental Impacts of Groundwater Irrigation Using the Life Cycle Assessment Method: Application to a Tunisian Arid Region

“…However, the intensification of groundwater irrigation is likely to contribute to a variety of environmental impacts. The most obvious is the overexploitation of the groundwater resource and an increased sensitivity to climate change (Froebrich et al ., ). Moreover, climatic models predicting a decrease in groundwater resources expect this phenomenon to be even worse in arid regions, where groundwater resources deserve great attention and need specific preservation frameworks (Barnosky et al, ).…”