Informations et ressources scientifiques
sur le développement des zones arides et semi-arides

Titre : In hot water : a study on sociotechnnical intervention models and practices of water use in smallholder agriculture, Nyanyadzi catchment, Zimbabwe

Auteur : Bolding, A.

Université de soutenance : Wageningen Universiteit

Grade : PhD thesis 2004

Présentation
This study focuses on intervention processes in smallholder agriculture in the Nyanyadzi river catchment, located in Chimanimani district, Manicaland Province Zimbabwe. In particular it concerns itself with sociotechnical interventions that were implemented by Agritex, the local extension and irrigation service, in the mid-1990s. Despite a flurry of interventions and agrarian policies directed at the intensification of agricultural production and promotion of commercial agriculture in communal and resettlement areas, agricultural production has neither raised sufficiently nor in a sustainable manner.
In this study intervention is taken as a measure to evoke a change in ordering practices of social actors, artefacts and natural elements by pursuing a model of how these three categories of actors might interrelate in a new way. Three models are researched in detail : the model of the smallholder commercial farmer as propagated in the master farmer training programme ; the model of intensive smallholder irrigated agriculture in the case of a government managed smallholder irrigation scheme ; the model of controlling water flows by means of conservation works and state management at catchment level of the Nyanyadziriver. In all three cases results have been disappointing to date : the master farmer programme has been ineffective in evoking widespread innovations in smallholder agriculture, the performance of the smallholder irrigation scheme has been low at high cost and finally siltation, land degradation and an increasingly fierce struggle over scarce river water have emerged in the catchment.

Mots clés : water use / water management / small farms / zimbabwe / government / intervention / agricultural policy

Présentation