control on farm generally irrigate only about half of all the land they cultivate. Like our finding that households choose to cultivate both improved and traditional varieties of the same crop within the same season, we expect that this on-farm diversification in watering strategies represents an expression of risk preferences and possibly some level of heterogeneity of withinfarm agro-ecological conditions and crop choice. As expected, great heterogeneity exists across countries. Ethiopia and Niger have the highest percent of cultivating households with some form of irrigation in the main season with Malawi at the lowest end.<sup>13</sup> Table 10: Percent of cultivating households with irrigation and irrigation scheme access

||Total ha of<br>cultivated<br>land under<br>irrigation by<br>smallholders|% of all cultivated<br>land under<br>irrigation by<br>smallholders|% of households<br>with at least<br>some irrigation<br>on farm|Most common<br>water source for<br>irrigating<br>households|Average % of<br>cultivated land<br>that is irrigated at<br>household level<br>(excludes zeros)|% of households<br>living in a<br>community with an<br>irrigation scheme|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Ethiopia|163,087|1.3|8.7|River|28.2|50.2|
|Malawi|4,090|0.2|0.4|Bucket|61.5|18.8|
|Niger|136,383|1.4|6.9|Well|34.7|5.4|
|Nigeria|274,681|2.5|4.1|Divert stream|67.1|-|
|Tanzania|239,493|1.8|3.6|Flooding|61.4|-|
|Uganda|174,972|3.5|3.9|-|82.6|-|
|_Average _|_165,451_|_1.8_|_4.6_|_-_|_55.9_|_24.8_|

Note: Total irrigated area at the country level involves plots cultivated in either season. The grayed column is best compared with the macro-statistics found in Table 4. For Uganda, this variable is observed at the parcel level with no variation by season. Most common water source is tabulated at the plot level instead of household level. The “average” row includes simple (unweighted) averages across the statistics reported at the country level.

In the community level surveys, we observe whether an irrigation scheme exists in three of the six LSMS-ISA countries. Community schemes may be important in areas where setting up irrigation facilities on-farm may be an unfeasible strategy for farming households. We match those variables to the household-level to determine which households live in communities where an irrigation scheme is present; however, household-level use of community-level irrigation schemes is unobserved. Half of all cultivating households in Ethiopia live in a community with an irrigation scheme, with far fewer in Malawi and Niger. Even so, the percent of households living in communities with an irrigation scheme is far larger than the percent of households utilizing on-farm irrigation techniques in Ethiopia and Malawi, which may imply that households are utilizing other options beyond what we observe on-farm. In the other direction, in those communities with irrigation schemes, 34 percent of households also have on-farm irrigation in Niger, compared to 14 percent in Ethiopia and only 1 percent in Malawi.

# <u>Mechanization</u>

Mechanization is a process and may express itself through the utilization of different technologies across different cultivating environments. That said, the LSMS-ISA surveys provide a picture of current use or ownership of inputs associated with mechanization: traction animals and farming machinery. In only a limited number of surveys do we observe whether or not particular types of traction animals or equipment were used on individual plots in the main growing season. In all other countries, we can only ascertain whether traction animals and farm machinery are _owned_ . In the case of farm machinery, we can be fairly certain that the observed equipment is used in agriculture. Traction animals, however, may not necessarily be used for

> 13 Note that most of the irrigation in Niger is concentrated in the contre season, not the main season, so the estimates included here underestimate the total incidence of irrigation used year round.

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