Understanding farmers’ preferences for wastewater reuse frameworks in agricultural irrigation: lessons from a choice experiment in the Western Cape, South Africa

Abstract

Wastewater has emerged as an alternative source of water. Since the agricultural sector remains the largest water user world-wide, it is the main potential user of treated wastewater. However, while there are trade-offs in using wastewater, it may be the only option in water-scarce regions. South Africa has included water reuse as a policy option; hence the aim of this study is to understand farmers' preferences regarding water reuse frameworks for irrigation. A choice modelling approach was applied to identify the elements defining these frameworks and to quantify their relative importance amongst farmers in the agricultural hinterland of Cape Town. The findings suggest that water reuse is acceptable to farmers in the area. Furthermore, they prefer options that guarantee good quality water and low levels of restrictions on use practices. Due to low trust in water service providers, farmers are willing to pay for a privately-managed scheme for water reuse, which suggests that the management model for implementing such schemes is important.

Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services from Small-Scale Agricultural Management Interventions in Burkina Faso: A Discrete Choice Experiment Approach

“…The heterogeneity in preferences show that more than 99% of the farmers have a great interest in using organic matter and are WTP on average, about 120,000 F CFA (US$190.3) per ha for RRR solutions that feature this attribute. This is in line with many previous studies, which have shown that the recovery and reuse of wastes can contribute substantially to reducing poverty, improving food security and managing natural resources more sustainability to protect ecosystems and build climate-resilient communities [54,55].…”

Farmers’ adoption of agricultural innovations: A systematic review on willingness to pay studies

“…Approaches for measuring WTP or WTA (economic valuation) can be placed in two broad categories: the revealed preference (RP) and the SP methods. Most of the studies reviewed could have applied SP methods because these methods are able to estimate both the use and the nonuse values of a product or a service, compared to the RP approaches that measure only the use values (Bozorg-Haddad et al, 2016; Saldías et al, 2016). In fact, most studies measured WTP for water and environmental improvement innovations.…”

Use of (partially) treated municipal wastewater in irrigated agriculture; potentials and constraints for sub-Saharan Africa

“…As discussed, water reclamation is regarded an affordable alternative for many water-scarce regions (Saldías et al, 2016) and a reliable provision of a consistent nutrient source (Akponikp� e et al, 2011;Miller--Robbie et al, 2017;Scott et al, 2004). Given the aforementioned accessibility to wastewater streams, irrigation tends to be an important endpoint for untreated or (partially) treated wastewater in many developing countries (Al-Hamaiedeh and Bino, 2010;Jaramillo and Restrepo, 2017;Keraita et al, 2008;Raschid-Sally et al, 2005;Scott et al, 2004).…”