Impact Evaluation of the NIA Irrigation System in the Lives of Libuganon Farmers

Rationale of the study Irrigation system projects represent a critical infrastructure for agricultural development in this rice growing areas. Improved water system and continuous supply is recognized by the farmers as an important factor in the achievement of increasing rice production and others farm products to alleviate poverty. The office of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) is the lead agency for irrigation development. The vision of this agency is that, establish a dynamic and functional NIA and irrigators association working partnership to accelerate development and provide efficient levels of irrigation services. One of NIA's missions is, to promote and implement irrigation management transfer by preparing and training the farmers to over the irrigation system in the near future. One of NIA's goals is, to support economic and social growth in the rural areas through irrigation development and management. For NIA to address the farmers needs, alleviation of poverty is the thrust of NIA through Empowerment of the Irrigators Association, is one of its performance pledges. In view of the aforementioned vision, mission, goal and performance pledge of NIA, we chose the the Libuganon River Irrigation Sytem project to be evaluated. The Libuganon River Irrigation System covers the Municipality of Dujali, Sto Tomas and Carmen, Davao del Norte Province. Objective of the study To determine the level of impact of the NIA irrigation system in the lives of the Libuganon Farmers Scope and Limitation of the Study The evaluators cover only four accessible Irrigators Association at 25 samples per association due to budget constraints.

Impact Evaluation Framework Input Variables Water Supply Outcome Variables

Yield Annual Expenditures

Income form irrigation Other farming income Non farming income Aggregate income

Quality of Living: - food - clothing - health - education

The evaluators used the framework above input variables including water supply which is the project's ultimate purpose as a means to have an income, namely: income from irrigation, other farming income, non farming income and aggregate income. To determine the effect, the following are the outcome variables, yield through irrigation system, the annual expenditures incurred and how the quality of life of these farmers improved based on the quality of food, clothing, health and education. Methodology The team of evaluators conducted an ocular visit and at the same time focus group discussion to gather valuable information that would help the team in the formulation and development of research design and instrument. The evaluation design used was based on the with (presence of water supply) and the without (absence of water supply) for the multivariate analysis. To gather data, proper survey was conducted with the help of the water master in the selected area. The gathered data were processed and analyzed using the following measurements: Paired T-test for the following variables:Yield (with or without irrigation system),Quality of life (with or without irrigation system) and Linear Regression for the following input and outcome variables: Yield equals Water Supply , Annual Expenditures equals Income from irrigation, other farming income, non-farming income, aggregated income. Then interpretation of results, conclusion and formulate recommendations.

Results and Findings

The Adjusted R-squareMeasures the proportion of the variance in the dependent variable , annual expenditures for cloth that was explained by variations in the independent variables non farming income, income without irrigation during dry season, fishing, lending, vegetables, sarisari store, other farming income, driving, copra, banana, income with irrigation during wet season, income without irrigation during wet season, income with irrigation during dry season). Since theAdjusted R-Square shows that 11.1% of the variance was explained. R-squareMeasures the proportion of the variance in the dependent variable annual expenditures for cloth that was explained by variations in the independent variables non farming income, income without irrigation during dry season, fishing, lending, vegetables, sarisari, other farming income, driving, copra, banana, income with irrigation wet, iwowet, iwdry ). The "R-Square"' tells us that 22.6% of the variation was explained. Std Error of Estimate Std error of the estimate measures the dispersion of the dependent variables estimate around its mean (since the Std. Error of the Estimate is 5261.65 is more than 10% of the mean, it is high.

Conclusions and Recommendations Yield has significantly increase with the presence of the irrigation system Quality of living has significantly increase with the presence of the irrigation system which was manifested by the significant contribution of farmers income from irrigation/palay farming. Partial participation (canal clearing) of farmers through Irrigators Association in the implementation of irrigation system has significant results amongst other variable such as participation of farmers, IA performance, NIA full management and NIA Level 2 management. Therefore: NIA should take into consideration on the actions pertaining to the Level 3 management. The irrigation system plays a major role or great impact in the lives of the Libuganon Farmers .