Viewpoint - Seeing Like a Farmer - How Irrigation Policies May Undermine Farmer-Led Irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa

State and non-state support for farmer-led irrigation can help resource-poor farmers and mitigate adverse social and environmental impacts. However, emerging farmer-led irrigation policies are usually based on assumptions, objectives, and approaches that do not match with many farmer realities. As a result, farmer-led irrigation policies may stifle farmers' initiatives and the distinctive strengths of these irrigation ventures. Based on two key learnings from studies on farmer-led irrigation in Kenya and Zimbabwe, this viewpoint explores how external interventions may adversely affect irrigation development. First, farmer-led irrigation is characterised by a high degree of farmer autonomy, dynamism, and flexibility. Therefore, farmer-led ventures can fail and struggle, and learning and progress are a result of this autonomy. Embedding often-informal initiatives in formal structures can smother the autonomous and/or entrepreneurial character of farmer-led irrigation. Second, farmers' aspirations and needs do not always reflect a market-oriented and long-term engagement in irrigation. Dominant frames of commercialising farmer-led irrigation may therefore fail to accommodate the diverse needs of farming households. Interventions may be most meaningful when they recognize, build on, and support diverse aspirations of rural households, aimed at promoting their livelihoods and resilience without promoting specific technologies or pathways. This requires a shift in planning beyond technocratic irrigation discourses of market orientation and water efficiency and productivity.