COMPLEMENTARITY AND COMPETITIVENESS OF LARGE‐ AND SMALL‐SCALE IRRIGATED FARMING: A TANZANIAN EXAMPLE

Published date01 August 1978
Date01 August 1978
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0084.1978.mp40003001.x
OXFORD BULLETIN
of
ECONOMICS and STATISTICS
COMPLEMENTARITY AND COMPETITIVENESS OF
LARGE- AND SMALL-SCALE IRRIGATED
FARMING: A TANZANIAN EXAMPLE
By ARTHUR HAZLEWOOD and IAN LIVINGSTONE
Linear programming methods and their extensions have been widely applied to
agricultural problems in both developed and less developed countries. Generally
the availability of labour and land form the constraints in the maximisation prob-
lem involved. The present article applies the most simple linear programming
technique in a fruitful way to a problem in irrigation economics, the estimation of
irrigable areas, in which not land or labour, but water availability in particular
months, forms the constraint in the linear programming problem. In considering
the choice between development of paddy production in the Usangu Plains of
Southern Tanzania through large (state) farms or through small-scale village
production, the linear programming approach reveals that these are in fact not
alternatives, but that they ought to be combined to maximize the area under paddy.'
ESTIMATION OF IRRIGABLE AREA
The problem considered here relates to the estimation of area irrigable from the
run-of-the-river: no inter-seasonal water storage, involving dams, to transfer water
from wet to dry seasons, is assumed. The irrigable area may be estimated by com-
paring the water requirement for a unit area of irrigated cultivation with the
volume of water available from the river. To determine the volume of water
required for a unit area of cultivation at each and every time of the year, it is
necessary to specify a cropping pattern, because the water requirement will depend
on the particular crops and the particular time at which they are planted. Rough-
ly speaking, one can divide the water flow in each month by the water requirement
per hectare for that month to obtain the maximum which would be irrigable in
The area irrigable by a combination of large farm and peasants is so much greater than
that irrigable by a large farm alone as far to outweigh the effect on production of differences in
yield.
195
Volume 40 August 1978 No. 3

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