Henning Bjornlund

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of South Australia

Equality of Opportunity and gender equality, key components of the UNs' Sustainable Development Goals and Inclusive Growth initiatives, require wellbeing measures that reflect the extent to which such targets are being achieved. From a measurement perspective, the Equal Opportunity literature distinguishes between inequalities arising from individu...

Smallholder irrigation schemes are vulnerable to increased climate variability and change, particularly increased water stress. This paper explores whether the introduction of Agricultural Innovation Platforms and soil monitoring tools in smallholder irrigation schemes can improve the adaptive capacity of farmers and schemes in the Insiza District....

Detrimental impacts from COVID-19 restrictions on households and agricultural productivity reinforce the need for resilience building and transformation in African food systems. Capitalizing on the opportunity to learn lessons from the ‘Transforming Small-scale Irrigation in Southern Africa’ (TISA) project (2013–2023), we summarize TISA’s outcomes...

We examine whether soil moisture and nutrient monitoring tools and Agricultural Innovation Platforms improve farmers adaptive capacity to climate change in the context of two small-scale irrigation schemes in Tanzania. Analysis of household surveys and farmer field books show that these interventions have significantly increased household income an...

This paper analyses the capacity of participatory mapping as a multi-level learning process to identify andovercome current barriers to productivity within small-scale irrigation schemes. The analysis is based on thirteensmallholder irrigation schemes in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe, where farmers, project officers andother key stakeholders p...

Utilizing survey information obtained from five irrigation schemes in southeastern Africa, we investigated the influence of agricultural innovation platforms (AIPs) and monitoring tools on a range of farm and household outcome indicators. Doubly robust estimation was used to measure the effects of these interventions, with a variety of other method...

The United Nations calls for action to achieve 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). We argue that the current development paradigm is an impediment to achieving several of these goals. We identify 14 agricultural research and development (R&D) needs, which ought to be addressed to achieve critical SDGs. We also identify the paradigm shifts requ...

Studies are scarce linking planned farmer adaptation practices with their actual practices over time. This study addresses this gap by investigating planned and actual adaptation behaviour, using data collected in 2014 and 2017, from various irrigation schemes in south-eastern Africa. Four planned farm adaptation indexes were created and analysed,...

The developing world and sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, are facing numerous challenges: food security, poor nutrition, environmental degradation, social and economic inequalities, and slow economic growth. Agricultural production must increase to address these challenges, while also responding to increased demand for food. Small-scale irrigatio...

Youth employment is a global policy priority and critical for economic and social growth. However, there has been limited focus on youth on small-scale irrigation schemes in sub-Saharan Africa. This study contributes to this gap and explores young people’s involvement in on- and off-farm work and work away and the influences and constraints they ex...

This article is the third in a series of historical reviews on sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), exploring why agricultural production and irrigation schemes are underperforming, and how this contributes to high levels of food insecurity. The expression ‘food security’ emerged in 1974 following the Sahel and Darfur famines. Despite SSA being a net agricult...

Meeting growing demand for water and food in Africa, and other parts of the Global South, presents a significant and critical challenge over the next 50 years. This paper draws on an ongoing project in Africa to outline the research-for-development work that is urgently required to facilitate a paradigm shift in agricultural water management. Such...

Adopting new models for sustainable and profitable agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa requires a comprehensive evaluation of fertilizer use in terms of agronomic performance, economic implications, the integration of crops and livestock, and policy recommendations.

Drawing on the results of the Transforming Irrigation in Southern Africa project, we assess positive transitions in smallholder irrigation schemes. The project's theory of change is evaluated. Soil monitoring tools and agricultural innovation platforms were introduced in five irrigation schemes in Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. The synergies be...

This article explores the factors causing the current poor performance of most government irrigation schemes in sub-Saharan Africa. The literature review finds that the poor performance is not primarily caused by socioeconomic and biophysical conditions inherent to sub-Saharan Africa. African farmers have adapted to diverse biophysical conditions a...

The mechanisms linking growth and inequality are critical for poverty reduction, yet they remain poorly understood at the micro level, as current knowledge is dominated by country-wide studies. This article evaluates farm income growth and changes in inequality among five smallholder irrigation communities in Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Over...

Smallholder irrigation is an important pathway towards better live- lihoods and food security in sub-Saharan Africa. This article assesses the contribution of farmer-friendly soil and water monitoring tools, and agricultural innovation platforms, towards household income and food security in two small-scale irrigation schemes in Tanzania. Quantitat...

This paper reports on the introduction of SWM technology, soil moisture and nutrient monitoring tools, alongside Agricultural Innovation Platforms (AIP) in three small-scale irrigation schemes in southern Africa. Quantitative and qualitative data are presented on the changes and benefits that have resulted, including increased yield and profitabili...

Smallholder irrigation is an important pathway towards better livelihoods and food security in sub-Saharan Africa. This article assesses the contribution of farmer-friendly soil and water monitoring tools, and agricultural innovation platforms, towards household income and food security in two small-scale irrigation schemes in Tanzania. Quantitativ...

Over four years, a research-for-development project was implemented at the 25 de Setembro irrigation scheme in Mozambique. The project introduced agricultural innovation platforms to overcome barriers to production such as input and output supply chains and poorly maintained irrigation canals. Soil moisture and nutrient monitoring tools were provid...

Many small-scale irrigation schemes are dysfunctional, and learning , innovation and evaluation are required to facilitate sustainable transitions. Using quantitative and qualitative data from five irrigation schemes in sub-Saharan Africa, we analyze how learning and change arose in response to: soil monitoring tools, which triggered a deep learnin...

Contingent valuation is used to elicit irrigators’ willingness to pay for soil moisture tools in irrigation schemes in Africa, with various econometric methods employed to mitigate potential bias. Key results include that there is a neighbourhood effect influencing adoption, and that being located downstream and spending more on irrigation water po...

Successful irrigated agriculture is underpinned by answering two critical questions: when and how much to irrigate. This article quantifies the role of the Chameleon and the Wetting Front Detector, monitoring tools facilitating decision-making and learning about soil-water-nutrient dynamics. Farmers retained nutrients in the root zone by reducing i...

This article explores the value of Ostrom’s socio-ecological systems framework and Meadows’s leverage point hierarchy, as structured diagnostics, to define systemic problems and avoid approaches based on linear thinking. These frameworks were applied as an ex post analysis of an irrigation scheme in Zimbabwe, drawing on the scheme’s baseline condit...

Agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa has, in recent times, remained lower than the rest of the world. Many attribute this to factors inherent to Africa and its people, such as climate, soil quality, slavery and disease. This article traces the role of agriculture through history and argues that these are not the main reasons. Before the ar...

This research explores potable water consumers' willingness to pay to fund up-front investments in their potable water supply services (PWSSs), which will reduce rates in the longer term. An online survey of 1,970 New Zealand PWSS consumers was carried out in 2011 to identify factors that influence individual discount rates (IDRs) related to PWSS i...

Irrigation has been promoted as a strategy to reduce poverty and improve livelihoods in southern Africa. Households’ livelihood strategies within small-scale irrigation schemes have become increasingly complex and diversified. Strategies consist of farm income from rain-fed and irrigated cropping as well as livestock and an increasing dependence on...

While the earliest irrigation societies were relatively simple in their technical and social structures, they represent complex socioecological systems where human activities interact with the biophysical environment. Actions taken within any part of the system affect other parts, often with detrimental environmental impact. In this paper, we propo...

Small-scale communal irrigation schemes in Africa have not realised returns on investment. Critical to this failure is that funders, designers and managers of these schemes have not recognized them as complex socio-ecological systems with a diversity of constraints. These schemes are often under-performing and characterized by a subsistence orienta...

The Canadian province of Alberta has incorporated market-based instruments into recent policy to manage non-point-source pollution. Investigating context-specific social discourses through the Q-method provides a timely understanding of why these instruments have not been well implemented in southern Alberta, and may assist in developing their pote...

Poor water service quality in developed countries may have a greater impact on lower-income households To determine an 'affordable' potable water supply service, existing studies focus on the trade-off between price and quality of service-neglecting the wider economic implications of a reduced service quality. This paper analyses the relationship b...

This article analyzes the relationship between perceived service quality and averting behaviours and averting expenditures across prominent water service attributes, using revealed preference survey data from New Zealand water supply customers. It finds that nearly 50% of consumers undertake averting behaviours, investing substantial amounts in imp...

Many small-scale irrigation systems are characterized by low yields and deteriorating infrastructure. Interventions often erroneously focus on increasing yields and rehabilitating infrastructure. Small-scale irrigation systems have many of the characteristics of complex socio-ecological systems, with many different actors and numerous interconnecte...

Significant expansion of irrigated agriculture is planned in Africa, though existing smallholder schemes perform poorly. Research at six schemes in Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe shows that a range of problems are exacerbated by poor management, with limited market linkages leading to underutilization and a lack of profit. Improving sustainabili...

African governments have ambitious plans to expand irrigated agriculture, though existing smallholder schemes have largely failed to use land and water sustainably or become profitable. Six government-owned irrigation schemes in Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe were assessed to identify common policy barriers and opportunities for higher productiv...

Crop diversification is one way of improving the profitability of small-scale irrigation schemes. The 25 de Setembro scheme is an ideal site to analyze diversification, as it is influenced by the markets in Maputo and South Africa. This study uses information gathered from observations, discussions with irrigators and an irrigator survey. Results i...

Australia leads the world in establishing water markets to help reallocate a resource in scarce supply. Official water markets have now been in place in Australia for over three decades, which allows detailed financial analysis and comparison to be made on the returns available from investing in water. This chapter employs some simple financial ana...

Irrigation development in Sub-Saharan Africa has lagged significantly behind that in other developing countries. Consequently, economic development and food security are also lagging behind. Since the mid-2000s there has been a resurgence in the willingness to invest in irrigation, and Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest potential of any developing...

This study provides an overview of extension influence on the adoption of irrigation innovations in developed and developing countries, and finds that extension plays a more significant positive role in influencing soft technology adoption in developing countries. Case studies on the nature, use and availability of extension advice in six irrigatio...

Despite the importance of adopting improved irrigation technologies to increase on-farm irrigation efficiency, our understanding of what determines farmers’ adoption decisions in southern Alberta remains relatively poor. The overall goals of this study are to examine the extent of adoption (proportion of all irrigators that have started the adoptio...

Irrigation is a key strategy for food security and poverty alleviation among small farmers in Tanzania. However, the potential of irrigation to improve food security is limited by multiple barriers. This article discusses these barriers within the Kiwere and Magozi schemes. Results indicate that water supply barriers are caused by poor irrigation i...

Productivity barriers and opportunities influencing smallholder irrigation sustainability in Zimbabwe were identified using case studies of the Silalatshani and Mkoba irrigation schemes. The major barriers were poor infrastructure and soil fertility, and poor access to farm inputs, farm implements, functioning markets and agricultural knowledge, wh...

Irrigators in the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) of Australia face a salinity triple threat, namely: dryland salinity, surface-water, and groundwater salinity. Water trading has now been adopted to the point where it is a common adaptation tool used by the majority of irrigators in the Basin. This study uses a number of unique water market and spatial...

This chapter provides an overview of the issues and challenges facing policy makers intending to establish groundwater markets. It studies in detail two developed countries that have introduced groundwater trading and have some experience in its implementation—Australia and the United States of America—and draws out lessons from these countries tha...

This chapter provides an overview of the issues and challenges facing policy makers intending to establish groundwater markets. It studies in detail two developed countries that have introduced groundwater trading and have some experience in its implementation—Australia and the United States of America— and draws out lessons from these countries th...

Results from an irrigator survey in southern Alberta (Canada) indicate that more than half of irrigators changed irrigation technologies during the five-year period (crop years 2007/08–2011/12) and this potentially improved application efficiency. Changes were made from flood irrigation to wheel-move sprinklers to high- and then low-pressure pivot...

It is a challenging task for policy makers to design optimal water resource management policies that accommodate increasing demand while minimizing social and environmental impacts of water extraction. We used four surveys of the general community and irrigators in Alberta’s South-Saskatchewan River Basin to explore the values people assign to wate...

Using thirteen years of market data from the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District in Victoria, Australia, cash-flow analyses are used to assess returns that investors could have achieved through an investment in water entitlements under different cash-flow management scenarios. Cycle factor analyses were conducted to determine the extent to which en...

This paper reviews the historic relationship between the explicit market price of water entitlements and the implicit value of water when attached to land. Hedonic functions are applied to 246 farm sales during 2001-02 in the Greater Shepparton, Campaspe and Moira areas of northern Victoria in order to establish the implicit value of water. These i...

This paper examines aspects of changes to explicit and implicit water prices during the early years of water trading along the River Murray. Focusing on the mid to late 1990s, it traces price changes that occurred during the transition from an ‘immature’ market, where the supply of unused water influenced sales, to an early maturing stage where sal...

This study examines the adoption of improved irrigation scheduling methods in Alberta and identifies the major factors that influence farmers’ decisions to adopt them. The data were collected in a large farm-household survey conducted in 12 irrigation districts as well as among private irrigators in southern Alberta. Results show that the most comm...

Sharing water is a contentious environmental issue. Irrigation controls the majority of water resources, but international experiences illustrate that irrigators are reluctant to share their water. How can resource managers achieve acceptance of water-sharing policies to meet the changing needs of society? This study focuses on strategies for selli...

Globally, there is growing competition for a wide range of natural resources. The need to manage and allocate natural resources fairly has been identified as an important policy goal in many discussions. These deliberations have in turn brought questions of social justice into sharp focus. To better understand justice issues in resource allocat...

Water markets have been used by Australian irrigators as a way to reduce risk and uncertainty in times of low water allocations and rainfall. However, little is known about how irrigators’ bidding trading behavior in water markets compares to other markets, nor is it known what role uncertainty and a lack of water in a variable and changing climate...

Water markets have increasingly been adopted as a reallocation tool around the world as water scarcity intensifies. Water markets were first introduced in Australia in the 1980s, and water entitlement and allocation trade have been increasingly adopted by both private individuals and governments. As well as providing an overview of water policy in...

Politically Alberta has acknowledged the need to reallocate existing water allocations to meet future demand using voluntary water transfers. However, support for water markets among irrigators has been slow to emerge, laws do not allow private entities to buy and hold water to meet in-stream needs and among the general public there has been a high...

This chapter describes why and how water markets have evolved in Australia. The various changes that have occurred in Australia’s water markets from their early inception to their current relative maturity are canvassed throughout. It outlines how various groups—mainly irrigators and governments—have used water markets, as well as some of the gener...

How to share scarce water resources is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century and presents one of the greatest risks to global societies. Governments have found it problematic to resolve these complex issues using traditional top-down approaches. Many jurisdictions have therefore made a transition from government to governance in water...

Climate change will affect the regional ability to achieve the poverty reduction and sustainable development (SD) objectives. Thus, any action plans to achieve these objectives should make climate change policies an integral part of the development planning process. The best practices and measures of climate change policies should be implemented to...

Future water policy strategies to address low environmental flows in the River Murray in Australia may include the continued development of programmes for irrigators to donate water. We identify and control for the interdependence between irrigators' recognition of the need for increased flows and their stated intention to donate seasonal allocatio...

Over-allocation of water resources to irrigation, industry, and cities has severely impacted flow-dependent riverine ecosystems and led to growing interest in ways to restore water to the environment; one increasingly popular approach is water buybacks. This paper reviews US and Australian experiences in buying back water, focusing on the condition...

Agriculture competes for access to water with other sectors and the environment; policymakers are being challenged to balance these competing demands. In the face of limited supplies, water reallocation among users is frequently advanced as a solution. However, this option is politically charged, and implementation success is strongly influenced by...

Since the early 1970s it has increasingly become apparent that the rate of resource extraction is unsustainable. It was also slowly acknowledged that the traditional regulatory approach to resource management proved inadequate to resolve the problem. The use of economic instruments and incentives was proposed as a better way of facilitating the nee...

Conflicts over reallocation of water, from existing water licence holders to meet new demand from consumptive users and the environment, are likely to intensify over time. This study explores the support for three policy orientations towards water sharing among four generations of voters. We find that the four generations have significantly differe...