"Increasing water scarcity downstream the kilombero river catchment: are the upstream rice farmers using the right irrigation technologies?

Climate change impacts are already pronounced in major river basins and water catchments of Tanzania, including the Rufiji River Basin and Kilombero River Catchment (KRC). Water scarcity and demand by downstream users have also increased. As a result, new adaptive ways of practicing agriculture are persuaded, including the system of rice intensification (SRI) that has recently been promoted which uses little water to produce more rice through controlled water usage. However, about 90% of rice produced in the catchment is from traditional flooding irrigation technology (TFIT), a technology that exposes a bulky of water to evaporation. This study collected primary data through questionnaires whereby the data were entered and sorted in SPPS 20, analyses were done through Stata 14 and Excel. After cleaning the collected data, the binary logistic regression was applied to evaluate what motivates the farming households in the catchment to adopt the proper rice irrigation technologies. The results of from the regression revealed that farmers engaging in off-farm economic activities were 2 times more likely to adopt SRI over those not engaging, male headed household were 3.7 times more likely to adopt SRI irrigation than female headed ones, each incremental year spent by household head in schooling caused increased household chance to adopt SRI irrigation by an average of 1.3 units and borrowing increased the likelihood of household to adopt SRI irrigation. Finally, the study recommends that years spent by farmers in schooling could be enhanced by enacting strict bylaws to curtail intentional dropouts from schools, and management of Kilombero District is encouraged to provide interest free loans to farmers in group to make them borrowing hence adopting SRI irrigation technology.