Drip irrigation for agriculture : untold stories of efficiency, innovation and development / edited by Jean-Philippe Venot, Marcel Kuper and Margreet Zwarteveen.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1 From obscurity to prominence: how drip irrigation conquered the world / JEAN-PHILIPPE VENOT --
- 2 Decentering the technology: explaining the drip irrigation paradox / MARGREET ZWARTEVEEN --
- 3 The practice of designing and adapting drip irrigation systems / HARM BOESVELD --
- 4 Re-allocating yet-to-be-saved water in irrigation modernization projects: the case of the Bittit irrigation system, Morocco / SASKIA VAN DER KOOIJ, MARCEL KUPER, CHARLOTTE DE FRAITURE, --
- 5 Unraveling the enduring paradox of increased pressure on groundwater through efficient drip irrigation / MARCEL KUPER --
- 6 Sour grapes: multiple groundwater enclosures in Morocco's Saïss region / LISA BOSSENBROEK --
- 7 Creating small farm entrepreneurs or doing away with peasants? State-driven implementation of drip irrigation in Chile / DANIELA HENRIQUEZ --
- 8 Conquering the desert: drip irrigation in the Chavimochic system in Peru / JEROEN VOS --
- 9 An elite technology? Drip irrigation, agro-export and agricultural policies in Guanajuato, Mexico / JAIME HOOGESTEGER --
- 10 Collective drip irrigation projects between technological determinism and social construction: some observations from Morocco / MOSTAFA ERRAHJ AND JAN DOUWE VAN DER PLOEG --
- 11 Historical perspective on low-cost drip irrigation design and promotion / ROBERT YODER --
- 12 Low-cost drip irrigation in Zambia: gendered practices of promotion and use / GERT JAN VELDWISCH, VERA BORSBOOM, FAMKE INGEN-HOUSZ, --
- 13 The conundrum of low-cost drip irrigation in Burkina Faso: why development interventions that have little to show continue / JONAS WANVOEKE, JEAN-PHILIPPE VENOT, MARGREET ZWARTEVEEN --
- 14 The mysterious case of the persistence of donor-and NGO-driven irrigation kit investments for African smallholder farmers / DOUGLAS J. MERREY --
- 15 'Bricolage' as an everyday practice of contestation of smallholders engaging with drip irrigation / MARCEL KUPER --
- 16 The 'innovation factory': user-led incremental innovation of drip irrigation systems in the Algerian Sahara / MOHAMED NAOURI --
- 17 Intermediaries in drip irrigation innovation systems: a focus on retailers in the Saïss region in Morocco / CAROLINE LEJARS AND JEAN-PHILIPPE VENOT --
- 18 Drip irrigation and state subsidies in India: understanding the success of the Gujarat Green Revolution Company / JANWILLEM LIEBRAND.

Initially associated with hi-tech irrigated agriculture, drip irrigation is now being used by a much wider range of farmers in emerging and developing countries. This book documents the enthusiasm, spread and use of drip irrigation systems by smallholders but also some disappointments and disillusion faced in the global South. It explores and explains under which conditions it works, for whom and with what effects. The book deals with drip irrigation 'behind the scenes', showcasing what largely remain 'untold stories'.

Most research on drip irrigation use plot-level studies to demonstrate the technology’s ability to save water or improve efficiencies and use a narrow and rather prescriptive engineering or economic language. They tend to be grounded in a firm belief in the technology and focus on the identification of ways to improve or better realize its potential. The technology also figures prominently in poverty alleviation or agricultural modernization narratives, figuring as a tool to help smallholders become more innovative, entrepreneurial and business minded. Instead of focusing on its potential, this book looks at drip irrigation-in-use, making sense of what it does from the perspectives of the farmers who use it, and of the development workers and agencies, policymakers, private companies, local craftsmen, engineers, extension agents or researchers who engage with it for a diversity of reasons and to realize a multiplicity of objectives. While anchored in a sound engineering understanding of the design and operating principles of the technology, the book extends the analysis beyond engineering and hydraulics to understand drip irrigation as a sociotechnical phenomenon that not only changes the way water is supplied to crops but also transforms agricultural farming systems and even how society is organized. The book provides field evidence from a diversity of interdisciplinary case studies in sub-Saharan Africa, the Mediterranean, Latin America, and South Asia, thus revealing some of the untold stories of drip irrigation.