Foreword

Andy Keller, Jean-Marc Faurès and Peter Mollinga

Panda or Hydra? The Untold Stories of Drip Irrigation

Marcel Kuper, Jean-Philippe Venot and Margreet Zwarteveen

Section I: Setting the Scene: Diverse Perspectives on Drip Irrigation

1. From Obscurity to Prominence: How Drip Irrigation Conquered the World

Jean-Philippe Venot

2. Decentering the Technology: Explaining the Drip Irrigation Paradox

Margreet Zwarteveen

3. The Practice of Designing and Adapting Drip Irrigation Systems

Harm Boesveld

Section II: Efficiency and Water Saving

4. Re-allocating Yet-to-be-Saved Water in Irrigation Modernization Projects, the Case of the Bittit Irrigation System, Morocco

Saskia van der Koiij, Marcel Kuper, Charlotte de Fraiture, Bruce Lankford and Margreet Zwarteveen

5. Unraveling the Enduring Paradox of Increased Pressure on Groundwater Through Efficient Drip Irrigation

Marcel Kuper, Fatah Ameur and Ali Hammani

6. Sour Grapes: Multiple Groundwater Enclosures in Morocco’s Saïss Region

Lisa Bossenbroek, Marcel Kuper and Margreet Zwarteveen

Section III: Modernization and Agrarian Change

7. Creating Small Farm Entrepreneurs or Doing Away with Peasants? State Driven Implementation of Drip Irrigation in Chile

Daniela Henriquez, Marcel Kuper, Manuel Escobar, Eduardo Chia and Claudio Vasquez

8. Conquering the Desert: Drip Irrigation in the Chavimochic System in Peru

Jeroen Vos and Anaïs Marshall

9. An Elite Technology? Drip Irrigation, Agro-Export and Agricultural Policies in Guanajuato, Mexico

Jaime Hoogesteger

10. Collective Drip Irrigation Projects between Technological Change and Social Construction: Some observations from Morocco

Mostafa Errahj and Jan Douwe Van der Ploeg

Section IV: Poverty and Development

11. Historical Perspective on Low-Cost Drip Irrigation Design and Promotion

Robert Yoder and Brent Rowell

12. Low Cost Drip Irrigation in Zambia: Gendered Practices of Promotion and Use

Gert Jan Veldwisch, Vera Borsboom, Famke Ingen-Housz, Margreet Zwarteveen, Nynke Post Uiterweer and Paul Hebinck

13. The Conundrum of Low Cost Drip Irrigation in Burkina Faso: Why Development Interventions that Have Little to Show for Continue

Jonas Wanvoeke, Jean-Philippe Venot, Margreet Zwarteveen and Charlotte de Fraiture

14. The Mysterious Case of the Persistence of Donor-and-NGO-Driven Irrigation Kit Investments for African Smallholder Farmers

Douglas J. Merrey

Section V: Alliances, Networks and Innovation

15. ‘Bricolage’ as an Everyday Practice of Contestation of Smallholders Engaging with Drip Irrigation

Marcel Kuper, Maya Benouniche, Mohamed Naouri, Margreet Zwarteveen

16. The ‘Innovation Factory’: User-Led Incremental Innovation of Drip Irrigation Systems in the Algerian Desert

Mohamed Naouri, Tarik Hartani and Marcel Kuper

17. Intermediaries in Drip Irrigation Innovation Systems: A Focus on Retailers in the Saïs Region in Morocco

Caroline Lejars and Jean-Philippe Venot

18. Drip Irrigation and State Subsidies in India: Understanding the Success of the Gujarat Green Revolution Company

Janwillem Liebrand

Postscript: A Dialectic Inquiry in the World of Drip Irrigation

Henk van den Belt

Initially associated with hi-tech irrigated agriculture, drip irrigation is now being used by a much wider range of farmers in emerging and developing countries. This book documents the enthusiasm, spread and use of drip irrigation systems by smallholders but also some disappointments and disillusion faced in the global South. It explores and explains under which conditions it works, for whom and with what effects. The book deals with drip irrigation 'behind the scenes', showcasing what largely remain 'untold stories'.

Most research on drip irrigation use plot-level studies to demonstrate the technology’s ability to save water or improve efficiencies and use a narrow and rather prescriptive engineering or economic language. They tend to be grounded in a firm belief in the technology and focus on the identification of ways to improve or better realize its potential. The technology also figures prominently in poverty alleviation or agricultural modernization narratives, figuring as a tool to help smallholders become more innovative, entrepreneurial and business minded. Instead of focusing on its potential, this book looks at drip irrigation-in-use, making sense of what it does from the perspectives of the farmers who use it, and of the development workers and agencies, policymakers, private companies, local craftsmen, engineers, extension agents or researchers who engage with it for a diversity of reasons and to realize a multiplicity of objectives. While anchored in a sound engineering understanding of the design and operating principles of the technology, the book extends the analysis beyond engineering and hydraulics to understand drip irrigation as a sociotechnical phenomenon that not only changes the way water is supplied to crops but also transforms agricultural farming systems and even how society is organized. The book provides field evidence from a diversity of interdisciplinary case studies in sub-Saharan Africa, the Mediterranean, Latin America, and South Asia, thus revealing some of the untold stories of drip irrigation.