Analysis of factors affecting proper utilization of water through Irrigation Cooperatives at Kolla Tembien Wereda, Central Tigray, Ethiopia

Abstract

Properly utilize of water is to be cited as one of the crucial problems that threaten to maintain the subsistence livelihood of the rural people in the study area. Tremendous efforts have been made by the government to cope up the utilize problem as to increase the status of the productivity per unit area by incorporating irrigation that could be utilize by individual HH. When the issue of economic growth and development of the country is raised, one has to take into account the performance of the smallholder farmers. Reducing the challenges they are facing and utilizing their potentials can help to accelerate the agricultural sector and economic development of the country as a whole. Agricultural cooperatives are an ideal means for selfreliance, higher productivity level and promotion of agricultural development. Therefore, the major concern of this study is empirically analyzing the factors affecting proper utilization of water through irrigation cooperatives found in the Kolla tembien district. Both primary and secondary data were taken for this study. All the irrigation cooperatives the study area select and a total of 120 sample respondents from kola tembien district. Primary data pertaining collected from selected respondents through structured questionnaire. The total respondents, of the cooperative are members for proper utilize of water. Secondary data of the cooperatives for recognizing irrigation cooperatives. The descriptive statistics was to analyze the mean difference of continuous and frequency difference of dummy variables. The Nominal logistic regression model was employed to find functional relationships between the explanatory and dependent variables by utilization categories, which were found differently using the irrigation for different purposes. The result of descriptive statistical analysis showed that, out of the 18 hypothesized variables only seven variables ( irrigation experience, off-farm income activity , water lifting devices , training , vi slope of the farm ,soil type of the farm and perception of the members ) showed significance difference at 1% and 5% significant level. Implications of this study are improving the irrigation cooperatives as well as utilize water of the irrigation cooperatives to face the challenges in the area especially in irrigation farmers’ produces, increasing the participation of the farmers in the cooperative through provision of different services and benefits, appropriation of surplus in the form of patronage refund, increasing the productivity and specialization of the farmers, continuation of distribution of water to the farmers and above all continuous education and enlightenment of the farmers about cooperative and its benefits are the utmost priority areas of interventions to improve the proper utilization of water through Irrigation cooperatives in the area.