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Size isn’t everything: narratives of scale and viability in a Tanzanian irrigation scheme

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 04:17 authored by Elizabeth HarrisonElizabeth Harrison, Anna Mdee
This paper explores tensions over scale and viability in irrigated agricultural development in Tanzania. A revival of ambition to transform African agriculture has reawakened debate over what type of agriculture can best deliver increased production and poverty reduction for rural populations. This paper examines these debates through the lens of an ethnographic study of an irrigated rice farm in Tanzania. With a chequered history of state and donor intervention management, Dakawa, Rice Farm in Mvomero District is now collectively farmed by a cooperative society of ‘small farmers’. It is widely hailed as a success, both of irrigation production, and of ‘small farmers’ in delivering this. However, such narratives of smallness and success obscure a more complex reality in which smallness of scale may be more of a discursive tool than a reflection of empirical reality. Although notions of ‘viability’ and ‘success’ in such development interventions are themselves also contested and depend on perspective, there is evidence that there are fundamental problems of both short- and long-term viability.

Funding

Innovations to Promote Growth among Small-scale Irrigators in Africa: An Ethnographic and Knowledge-Exchange Approach; G0983; ESRC-ECONOMIC & SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL; ES/J009415/1

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Journal of Modern African Studies

ISSN

0022-278X

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Issue

2

Volume

55

Page range

251-273

Department affiliated with

  • International Development Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-11-29

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2016-11-29

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-11-29

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