Manual - Participatory rapid diagnosis and action ... - FAO.org

PRDA Manual 23the irrigated scheme rather than collecting and processing quantitative data.The Rapid Diagnosis is also meant to establish a good working relationshipbetween the project and the farmers’ organization for future project activities.Thus it should not be perceived as an external investigation to pass judgmenton farmer’s practices but as a collective reasoning to improve them. Sensitiveinformation such as data farmers’ income should be collected only if farmersare not reluctant to give it. Otherwise value added and farmers’ income canbe estimated from information collected about “plot use”.The central question to be answered during the Rapid Diagnosis:What are the limiting factors to irrigated agricultural productivity andfarmers’ interests?Farmers’ interests relate to the objective they assign to irrigation, for example:maximize food production/ha; maximize income/ha; maximize labourproductivity.As this question is too large to tackle at once, the analysis of available datawill be done during a range of sub-questions divided along the lines of theconceptual framework. Note that these constituents do not imply some sortof chronological order for collecting information. Pieces of informationcollected in an interview with a farmer or while visiting the scheme can applyto various constituents. The four constituents of an irrigated agriculturalsystem should be seen as a framework to co-ordinate data collection as itgoes along for facilitating analysis and diagnosis.Irrigation scheme: Should the analysis of the irrigation scheme tell whetherthere is insufficient or insecure access to water within all plots?This question immediately brings up a “philosophical” question - whatplots belong to a scheme: those envisaged in the design and construction;those according to WUA’s objective; or the total potentially irrigable area?Whatever definition is chosen, the analysis can be best answered along thethree horizontal lines between land and water sub-constituents.• Site and water resourceIs the water resource a limiting factor to irrigating all the command areayear-round? If yes, what are the causes and what solutions have been foundby farmers to alleviate the problem?