by Claudia Ringler, IFPRI

1. How irrigation supports nutrition outcomes: New Insights
from the USAID Feed-the-Future Small-Scale Irrigation
project
Claudia Ringler, IFPRI
Stockholm, August 27, 2019

2. SMALL SCALE, FARMER LED IRRIGATION
Characteristics
• Self-provisioned access to water
• Range of technologies
• Individual, household or group scale
• Multiple sources of water
• Lack formal governance for water sources
• Supplemental and dry season irrigation
• Multiple uses (livestock, domestic)
• Often high value crops

4. IRRIGATION: DIETARY DIVERSITY AND NUTRITION
OUTCOMES ETHIOPIA & TANZANIA
• Both climate and idiosyncratic shocks have negative impacts
on dietary diversity and child nutrition in ETH and TAN
• Ethiopia: No statistically significant effects of irrigation on
women’s dietary diversity score (WDDS) and household
dietary diversity score (HDDS); but lower childhood wasting in
households that experienced at least one drought shock over
the past 5 years
• Tanzania: Irrigation leads to higher WDDS and higher HDDS
among households that reported drought shock in past 5
years

5. • Women consume low levels of nutrient-dense food groups: eggs,
dairy, dark-green leafy vegetables, meat, fish and poultry with
high seasonal variability: low dietary diversity score: 3-4 food
groups out of 10 (Minimum Dietary Diversity-Women—MDDW),
with seasonal variation (longitudinal survey)
• High seasonality of energy, protein, vitamin C, calcium, iron and
zinc intakes
• Women in irrigating households more likely to meet MDDW, and
higher energy and calcium intake than women from non-irrigating
households across all three survey rounds
• No malaria observed for SSI in survey sites
IRRIGATION: IMPACTS ON WOMEN’S DIETS IN
ETHIOPIA

6. IRRIGATION-NUTRITION LINKAGES: EVIDENCE
FROM NORTHERN GHANA

7. • Assess the WASH pathway for nutrition for irrigators and non-
irrigators
• Assess children’s outcomes in the longitudinal survey
• Collect new data that link irrigation with HWISE, rather than
WASH
• Add cross-sectoral communication tools to irrigation
interventions to assess benefits
IRRIGATION-NUTRITION LINKAGES: NEXT STEPS