Field guide on irrigated agriculture for field assistants

This Field Guide was produced in response to the Government of Malawi’s need to successfully increase the number of smallholder farmers engaged upon irrigated agriculture. The aim is to help field assistants and development officers to promote, encourage and support individuals and groups of smallholders to gain the benefits of irrigated agriculture.

IPTRID facilitated the preparation of the Field Guide modules and used the technical expertise of their partner institution HR Wallingford and experts from the Department of Irrigation, Malawi. The draft material was thoroughly reviewed and commented upon at a workshop of representative Field Assistants, Development Officers and national experts on horticulture and irrigation held in Lilongwe in November 1999.

The material included in the Field Guide deals with the most commonly occurring situations (crops, size of land holdings, etc.) facing smallholders who may be unfamiliar with irrigated cultivation. The material has been purposefully simplified to provide answers to the most commonly asked questions.

The Field Guide has also been published and printed in Malawi, by the Department of Irrigation and the Agricultural Communications Branch of the Ministry of Agriculture, as a loose-leaf folder to allow ease of revision and ease of use in the field.

The pdf version of the different parts of the Field Guide can be here downloaded:

	Front page
	Preface, acknowledgement and contents
	Why irrigate?
	Where can irrigated farming be developed?
	Selection of an irrigation method
	Irrigation system layout and operation
	Water in the soil and the crop
	Irrigated crop production
	Irrigation pumps
	Farmer organizations for irrigation
	Post-harvest handling and marketing
	Finance and depreciation
	Sources of figures and table used
	References consulted

The same matherial is also available as a zip file: