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Marginal and tenant farmers account for the lion’s share of the farming population throughout the Global South, and Nepal is no exception. Since these farmers often own tiny pieces of holdings or none at all, their participation in irrigation can potentially transform the agricultural landscape. Adoption of improved irrigation technologies has been hailed as crucial for the betterment of agricultural efficiency, to make smallholder farming more profitable, and for environmental sustainability. However, little is known about the socioeconomic factors that influence the adoption of improved irrigation technologies by marginal and tenant farmers. My research will fill this knowledge gap by studying how the marginal and tenant farmers navigate through the power relationships that comprise the web of relations they live within. I will focus on their multiple challenges: limited land ownership, poor or no access to financial resources, exploitative tenure and complicated institutional arrangements. I will use participatory research methods to understand the barriers and enablers of irrigation technology adoption across three stages: dissemination, take up, and continued use. Additionally, I will examine Nepalese agricultural and irrigation policies and initiatives, as well as carry out surveys to generate primary data from farmers, and interview a range of stakeholders. This participatory research will contribute to the promotion of technology access, usage, and management for small and tenant farmers.

Biography Manita Raut is a Ph.D. researcher and a John Allwright fellow at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy. She is currently conducting research on the barriers and enablers of irrigation technology adoption. Manita has five years of experience in natural resource management and is committed to gender and socially inclusive water governance.

Prior to her PhD, worked as a Senior Research Officer at International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Nepal. She worked on collective farming approaches, feminization of agriculture, agricultural technology adoption pertaining to marginal farmers and gendered and institutional access to ground water resource in Eastern Gangetic Plains.

Seminar host: Dr Rini Astuti Primary Supervisor: Kuntala Lahiri Dutt Panel Members: Quentin Grafton,Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Neil Lazarow