Full Version - The Water for Food Institute - University of Nebraska

Kebede Ayele, Soumen Biswas and Jeff Raikes
limited access to communication, irrigation and
inputs. Seeds for high-value vegetable crops, for
example, are either unavailable or too expensive,
particularly given the lack of access to financial
credit in Ethiopia.
IDE views farmers as customers, Ayele said. “We
don’t like the word beneficiaries. The connotation
there is a recipient and a giver relationship. We
are not givers. We create opportunities for them
to prosper and get themselves out of poverty.”
By listening to customers, he said, IDE can offer
products and services relevant to their needs and
help them use their primary resources – labor,
water and land – more productively.
IDE uses two key components: irrigation and
market access. Because the biggest constraint to
Proceedings of the 2011 Water for Food Conference 41
productivity is access to water, Ayele said, IDE
designs and develops simple and affordable
household irrigation systems. As a technology
facilitator and design developer, IDE pays the cost
of developing a product, such as a manual pump.
It then works with the private sector to build a
supply chain, training local manufacturers to
make the pump. Farmers bear the purchase cost.
But by adopting manual irrigation technology,
farmers can transition into producing marketable
high-value crops. IDE then connects them to
profitable markets for their products.
PRADAN in India begins at a more basic level,
Biswas said. If farmers view themselves as poor
and lacking technical skills, it may prohibit them
from entering the market or adopting technology.
Altering their self-view through social mobilization