Abstract

This article examines how smallholder farmers adapt their behaviors in response to water challenges. It employs a mixed-methods design, including focus group sessions and a survey of, and interviews with, farmers and key stakeholders concerned with government and farmer-led smallholder irrigation schemes (SIS) in Ashaiman, Ghana. A water-dependent adaptive index (WDAI) is developed from the data to capture the dynamics of farmers’ adaptive behaviors. The analysis suggests that rigid institutional structures, prescribing (in)appropriate farming behaviors within the government SIS, constrain farmers’ capacity to adapt their behaviors. The absence of such rigidity provides flexibility for farmers within the farmer-led SIS to easily adapt by focusing more on their behaviors’ expected consequences. These schemes require government support (but not control) to create institutional spaces for experimentation and social learning, which are vital to farmers’ developing mental models that focus more on the Consequentiality of their farming behaviors, and less on its Appropriateness.

摘要

本文探讨了小农如何应对水挑战适应他们的行为。它采用了混合方法设计，包括焦点小组会议以及对与政府和农民主导的小农灌溉计划（SIS）有关的农民和主要利益相关者的调查和访谈。从数据中得出水依赖适应指数（WDAI），以捕获农民适应行为的动态。分析表明，僵化的制度结构在政府SIS内规定了（不）适当的农业行为，从而限制了农民适应其行为的能力。缺乏这种僵化性为农民主导的SIS中的农民提供了灵活性，使其可以通过更加关注他们的行为的预期后果来轻松地适应。