Sustainable Agriculture Research, Issue: Vol.15, No.1

Sudan Gezira Scheme Institutions Performance Index (IPI) Integration of Physical and Functional Modernizations Framework

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 02:35:58 +0000

The Sudan Gezira Scheme stands as one of Africa’s largest and most pivotal irrigated agricultural projects, underpinning Sudan’s economy and food security. The Scheme operation, irrigation and institutional function inconsistent performance were recognized as crucial parts of the project failure. The integrated institutional functional assessment outlined in this research indicates the gap in knowledge and possible system limitations. The study systematically reviews the performance of the scheme’s institutions, with particular emphasis on the integration of physical and functional modernizations within the operational framework. A significant addition to this study is the introduction of innovative historical Institutional Performance Index (IPI), which provides a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of institutional effectiveness and responds over time. The historical HIPI aggregates key metrics —including infrastructure maintenance, water distribution efficiency, governance stability, and stakeholder coordination—collected from archival scheme records data. Technical assessments equations such as DSI, LCI and UEI are formed to trace the evolution of institutional performance capacity from the scheme’s inception 1920s up to the present. The analysis shows deep integration impact of physical deterioration of the current state of infrastructure, maintenance gaps, and functional impact of management reforms such as the transition from government-led operations to farmer-based Water User’s Associations. The assessment highlights challenges arising from climate variability, water scarcity, and financial constraints, as well as the effects of strategic shifts in governance management. Innovation econometrics Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and ECM Models are developed to understand complex integrated institutions’ performance phenomena in Gezira Scheme and generate an innovate applicable solutions. Utilizing data from precision agriculture, the study identifies priority areas for improving water use efficiency, cropping intensity, and long-term financial sustainability. The findings, supported by Historical Institutional Performance Index (HIPI) trends, underscore the critical need for targeted canalization rehabilitation, enhanced functional capacity framework, and real time data-driven resource allocation. Overall, the comprehensive evaluation delivers actionable insights for policymakers and stakeholders enabling them to address operational inefficiencies, adapt to changing environmental and economic conditions, and strengthen institutional resilience framework policy for the future. The empirical finding of long-term evaluation of institutional performance demonstrates that sustainable irrigation management framework requires more than hydrological planning. It demands coherent institutions, rehabilitated infrastructure, digital transformation, and governance control systems that align incentives with responsibilities. The study recommends establishing demand‑drive baseline water allocation to farmers and reduce heterogeneity and inequality through enhancing digital water distribution efficiency and increasing farmers income. The study confirms institutional behavior plays a central role in Scheme operation efficiency through integration physical and functional modernization framework and amplified results. A magnitude like –0.4 to –0.6 would mean 40–60% of disequilibrium is corrected each year, indicating meaningful institutional responsiveness.

Learning Dynamics and Appropriation of Agroecological Innovations by Experimental Farmers: Case of Farmers in the Kita District in Southwestern Mali

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 13:28:51 +0000

This article examines how experimental farmers learn and transform their learning into actionable knowledge. Data collection articulated qualitative and quantitative approaches among 52 farmers, through semi-structured interviews supplemented by questionnaires. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression were used for data analysis. The results revealed a diversity of learning forms, with 73% of farmers involved in reproduction, including 64% with adaptation and 35% without adaptation. This high level of reproduction reflects experiential learning’s capacity to promote adaptation and sustainable appropriation of agroecological innovations, while strengthening farmers’ capacity for innovation (86.5%). However, the sharing of acquired knowledge remains low (44%). Logistic regression showed that learning among experimental farmers, understood as their ability to learn about innovations, experiment with them, adapt them, and integrate them into their daily practices with a view to improvement, is more closely associated with the support and networking dynamics in which they operate than with their individual characteristics alone. These results call for strengthening learning environments by reinforcing local networks and organizing spaces for collective reflection on experiments. This approach opens up prospects for innovation policies focused on learning processes rather than on the dissemination of innovations, by supporting local innovation systems that promote continuous adaptation to climate, environmental, economic, and health challenges. On a scientific level, it also opens up prospects for research into the institutional conditions that enable these dynamics to be consolidated over time.

Innovation Processes for Managing Soil Fertility and Pests in Organic Cotton Production in Benin

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 09:10:56 +0000

This research used the Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) framework to analyse the innovation processes for soil fertility and pests management in organic cotton production in Benin. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected with 610 farmers selected through stratified random sampling, eight farmers’ organizations leaders, twenty organic cotton promoters, four input suppliers, and four agricultural extension agents. Descriptive statistics and content analysis were used for data analysis. Findings showed that about 47% of the innovations were adopted on a large scale. The innovation processes analysis showed that innovations that achieved large-scale adoption were developed using a co-construction approach that involved a wide range of stakeholders, including farmers. These technological, organizational and institutional innovations were constraint-specific and benefited from continuous technical support from agricultural development and extension services. The dynamic in interactions among stakeholders enables farmers to engage in a continuous learning process integrating endogenous and exogenous knowledge. The research confirms that the use of a co-construction approach in innovation process is important to trigger a sustainable production and use of agricultural innovations relevant to respond to ecological integrity challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Gezira Scheme Production System Vulnerability Assessment Resilience Interventions Policy and Econometric Framework

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:21:42 +0000

The Gezira Scheme—one of the world’s largest gravity‑fed irrigation systems—faces chronic water‑timing failures, seasonal credit shortages, and labour constraints that destabilize its official crop rotation and generate large fluctuations in total net return. Although the rotation is fixed on paper, farmers’ actual rotation has become dynamic, reactive, and constraint‑driven, especially after the 2005 Gezira Act. Using 50 years of data, this study applies a Vector Autoregression (VAR) with an Error Correction Model (ECM) to quantify the dynamic interactions among crop areas (cotton, wheat, sorghum, groundnuts) and total net return. The Error Correction Term captures how quickly the system returns to long‑run equilibrium after water shortages, rainfall variability, price changes, or labour constraints shocks.

Results show that the production system is highly sensitive to water timing, with cotton and wheat acting as the main sources of volatility, sorghum functioning as a stabilizing buffer crop, and groundnuts responding opportunistically to liquidity stress. A central structural finding is that only about 25% of the scheme can be irrigated simultaneously due to long‑term deterioration of conveyance capacity, forcing staggered irrigation cycles and chronic timing failures. Small shocks to water, finance, or labour trigger large behavioural adjustments, causing short‑run volatility and long‑run disequilibrium. Shifting irrigation from push to pull system at the minor and field canal levels—while maintaining the 25% simultaneous‑irrigation constraint—creates a demand‑driven water delivery regime that dramatically reduces water stress and timing failures, stabilizes crop choices, and improves both short‑run and long‑run system performance. This intervention with digital transformation aligns directly with VAR-ECM findings showing water as the primary driver of volatility and offers a practical, resilience‑engineering pathway to restore stability and predictability in the Gezira Scheme.

The study proposes a resilience‑engineering intervention framework—including downstream pull‑system irrigation at minor and field canal levels, Bt cotton adoption, reducing cotton area to save water, predictable seasonal finance, and mechanization—to restore system stability and improve water use efficiency. VAR-ECM stability tests confirm that these interventions directly address the structural drivers of volatility.

This study provides the first dynamic econometric assessment of the Gezira Scheme’s production system, quantifies crop‑specific roles in system sensitivity and stability, identifies water‑timing constraints as the dominant behavioural driver of rotation deviations. Significant contribution of the study is using econometric model for analyzing short‑run adjustments and long‑run equilibrium relationships in Gezira production system and introduces a novel integration of resilience‑engineering interventions within a VAR-ECM framework to guide sustainable transformation of large‑scale irrigation systems.

Influence of Conservation Agriculture-based Practices on Soil Fungi Diversity and CO2 Emission in Semi-arid Environment

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 09:26:15 +0000

The research aimed to assess the influence of conservation agriculture-based practice of no tillage and residue retention on the soil fungal diversity and carbon dioxide (CO₂)emission at the flowering stage of field pea in a rotation system with spring wheat. The treatments in the experiment were no-tillage with stubble removed (NT), no-tillage with stubble retained (NTS), conventional tillage with stubble removed (T), and conventional tillage with stubble incorporated (TS). Bulk soil and rhizosphere soil fungi DNA were sequenced using fungal ITS (ITS2) region genes. Treatments NT and NTS recorded the greatest fungal ITS region operational taxonomic units (OTUs) however, they did not vary significantly (P < 0.05) among treatments. Fungal OTUs diversity indices in the bulk soil were greater compared to those of the rhizosphere soil. The predominant phyla were Ascomycota, Basidiomycota and rare fungi genus Kurtzmanomyces were found in the rhizosphere. A few fungi class taxa recorded significant (P < 0.05) positive and negative correlations between tillage, soil respiration and total carbon emission. The study highlights the strong implication for the practice of residue retention and no-tillage to improve soil fungi, carbon emission efficiency and promote conservation agriculture-based practices.