ANALYSIS OF IRRIGATION SYSTEMS USING COMPARATIVE PERFORMANCE INDICATORS: A CASE STUDY OF TWO LARGE SCALE IRRIGATION SYSTEMS IN THE UPPER AWASH RIVER BASIN

Abstract

With the many variables that influence performance of irrigated agriculture, including infrastructure design, management, climatic conditions, price and availability of inputs, · and socioeconomic settings, the task of comparing performance across systems is formidable. However, if we focus on commonalties of irrigated agriculture-water, land, finances, and crop production-it should be possible to see, in a gross sense, how irrigated agriculture is performing within various settings. This research was conducted to introduce the concept of evaluating_ the countries large scale irrigation systems and using the IWMl's minimum set of indicators for the same purpose. This was done by selecting two irrigation systems in the Upper Awash Basin . NuraEra state and Wonji estate farm were selected for their relatively better organization and management, nearness to weather station and their representative nature of the large scale irrigation systems in the country. The necessary primary and secondary <data to calculate the nine indicators � were collected which are measurement of canal capacity and pump capacity, and total yields, farm gate prices of irrigaffd crops, area irrigated per crop per season or per year, crop types, production per season or per year, incomes generated from water fee and cropping pattern. The CropWat for windows computer programme (CropWat 4 Windows version 4.3) were used to estimate the crop water requirement and irrigation requirement of the irrigation schemes. \ ' \ VI . . . !.:\ � . . � 0 � The indicators used are o�ut per zapped area, ou;Pu't per co��d area, output per iri::�1tion diverted, outpuyfer water consumed, relati� water supply , .( ""'� ,/ <\ It / relative irrigat yH :upply, water deliv;f? capaci ty, financjl' self sufficiency and gross return of"vestment. The result of the analysis shows that the ratio of RWS, RIS and WDC for NuraEra are 4 . 8, 6.6 and 1 . 4 , for Wonji estate 1.36, 1.4 and 0.77 respectively. The four agricultural indicators ; output per cropped area, output per command, output per irrigation supply and output per water consumed are in the order of 21017 . 44, 23791 . 21, 0.74 and 2.3 for NuraEra and 20074. 97, 13916 . 03, 1 . 4 and 1 . 2 for Wonji, respectively .. NuraEra spent 0.36 percent of its income in the year of analysis and that of Wonji is 0 . 17 percent for operation and maintenance of the delivery system. FSS was 100% for both of the · farms. And gross return on investment was 84. 7% for NuraEra and 76. 8% for Wonj