Integrating Biophysical and Socio-Economic Approaches to Identify Suitable Policy Incentives for Enhancing Sustainable Water and Land Use: Case Study: WLI project in Iraq

It is no doubt that water resource is considered as main determining
factor for agriculture and the adoption of modern irrigation technique
would preserve this important resource. The shortage of rain in middle
and southern Iraq pushes farmers to depend on irrigated agriculture
especially from its main resource Euphrates and Tigris and their
tributaries. As the incoming water resource of these two rivers is
decreasing continuously in Iraq, this would dictate that farmers should
adopt modern irrigation technique which decrease the loss in water and
improve the water productivity per area unit in addition to the role of
these techniques in increasing productivity and decreasing production
costs. To achieve the Iraqi ministry of agriculture in cooperation with the
ICARDA applied a set of techniques in Iraq to solve this problem.
Among those techniques is Sub-surface Drip Irrigation (SDI) technique
which was applied on a group of cucumber farmers. The importance of
this technique in developing agricultural sector and the shortage of
knowledge regarding the factors affecting the adoption of this technique,
it is necessary to study the reasons that make farmers do not adopt the
technique. The objective of this study is to determine main factors that
affect farmer's decisions to adopt the technique and the important factors
in explaining farmer's decisions in study region (Abu Ghraib region) and
to deduce results which may help in developing the intervention policies
to encourage the technique adoption, The study consists of four chapters
and an introduction, the first chapter contained two sections, the first one
dealt with research methodology while the second one concentrated on
literature review. The second chapter was the theoretical framework and
it contained three sections, the first section explained the logistic
regression for the most important factors affecting the adoption of (SDI).
The second section dealt with Cost- Benefit Analysis (CBA), while the
third section explained ADOPT analysis as a technique used to predict
the adoption of the new agricultural techniques. The third chapter
concentrated on the reality of agricultural production in Iraq, and it
contained four sections, the first one the nature of production, area and
yield of cucumber in Iraq and Baghdad province for the period (1990-
2015) with reference to nutritional and economic importance of
cucumber. The second section tackled the price trend of cucumber during
the period (1990-2015), the third section dealt with the incoming water rater resource situation for Iraq in general and for Baghdad province in
particular. Also it discussed the modern irrigation techniques and its role
in agricultural sector development; it also shed light on the nature of
(SDI) and its role in developing the cucumber farmer's income who
applied the technique. The fourth section discussed the role of ICARDA
in developing agricultural sector in Iraq. The fourth chapter concentrated
on results and discussion and contained four sections; the first section
dealt with social and economic characteristic of study sample, while the
second section discussed the economic analysis of factors affecting the
adoption of (SDI) technique by using logistic regression, the third section
discussed the (CBA) for farmers adopting and for non-adopting farmers.
The fourth section discussed the prediction of adopting (SDI) by farmers
through using ADOPT program. It appears that economic and social
variables had a big role in adopting (SDI) technique. The results showed
that the variables; farmer age, farmer's education level, the source of
information, gave level of significance to affect the adoption at 1% level
of significance. The variables; the water source, profit expectation and
cucumber price, showed significance to affect on the technique adoption
at 5%level. The result of (CBA) showed that is economically feasible to
use (SDI) technique through a number of indicators among them: net
revenues as it amounted to I.D 4.5 million/ house in the case of the
technique adoption, as it was higher than the net revenues in case of
without using the technique which amounted to I.D 2.5 million/ house.
The internal rate of return was 41.88% and return to cost ratio was 2.27%
as it indicated that the invested dinar in (SDI) yields 2.27 dinars. The
results of ADOPT program showed that it is expected that 95% of
farmers will adopt the technique through time period of 15.5 years. The
sensitivity analysis showed that this period could be decreased or
increased through affecting some factors. The result showed that the
adoption of (SDI) on a large scale would contribute in improving the
farmer's standard of living and achieving part of development objectives
in agricultural sector. According to results the study arrived at some
conclusions and recommendations.