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The challenge confronted by farmers during prolonged periods of soil water stress is to guarantee the restoration of water and maintain the productivity of agricultural crops. Even in regions such as Amazon, the variability in the precipitation regime should be considered in agricultural planning. There are regions in which 80% of annual rainfall is concentrated between December and June. It is exactly during this period of low rainfall that small-scale family-based farmers need technological assistance to guarantee that their crops remain irrigated in order to maintain their income in this rural environment. The IrrigaPot arises as an alternative that is able to access rainfall that has been stored since the rainy season and provide it to plants when the soil is dry. The pots are maintained full with 20 liters of water, and through capillary action the soil maintains them constantly humid. This technology does not require specific knowledge with respect to irrigation regimes and is necessary for the farmer to dedicate his time to replacing water. The technology is totally automated through a simple system using a float, tubes, and connectors that connect a rubber hose to the lids of the pots buried in the soil.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of media and social network in the development of farmers land consolidation (LC) awareness, perception and adaptation intention decisions. Design/methodology/approach A face-to-face interview was carried out with randomly selected farmers from three districts (Neijiang, Ya’an and Dujiangyan) of Sichuan province, China. A structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was used to test the conceptual framework of this study. The SEM was set to confirmatory factor analysis of the measurement and structural models for maximum likelihood estimate by means of IBM-AMOS to capture the models goodness-of-fit. Findings The result indicates that social network contributes a significant role in the development of farmers LC awareness, perception and adaptation intention decisions than media. The total (direct and indirect) effect of social network and media toward the farmers LC adaptation intention is 56.7 and 14 percent, respectively. When farmers are aware and perceived of LC and rehabilitation program, their adaptation intention improves significantly. Therefore, social network is a useful tool in improving the awareness, perception and adaptation intention decisions of Sichuan farmers compared to media. Originality/value This study tests the applicability of SEM techniques to understand the farmers LC adaptation intentions; and synthesizes the impact of social network and media in the development of the farmers LC awareness, perception as well as adaptation intentions. This study serves as an outline for assessing the adaptation intention of farmers toward sustainable land management.

One season experiment conducted at two sites in northern Ethiopia (Maychew and Mekelle). The objective of the research was to evaluate the effect of in-situ rainwater conservation and sowing-date on soil-water status, barley yield and infestation of weeds. The treatments include three alternative sowing-dates (ESD; NSD; and LSD) and two in-situ rainwater conservation measures (tie-ridge and soil-bund, replicated three times. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to evaluate the effect of the treatments on total biomass and rainwater use efficiency (RWUE) of the local barley. The average soil-water content in the upper 0.6 m root zone in the soil-bund and tie-ridge improved over the control treatment by 14% and 24%, respectively. The grain yield on tie-ridge was increased significantly compared to the control at Maychew site. Tie-ridge improved grain yield by 4% and 18% over the control at Mekelle and Maychew, respectively. NSD significantly improved the grain yield over LSD at both experimental sites. Neither of the sowing-dates nor the in-situ rainwater conservation measures had significantly increased the dry-matter of a barley crop. However, when NSD combined with tie-ridge, the grain yield was significantly improved compared to the LSD. There was no significant difference in weed infestation in both experimental sites due to applying in-situ rainwater conservation. But, numbers of weeds were significantly higher in ESD compared to NSD and LSD on both experimental sites. For this reason, NSD with tie-ridging technique can be used as an option to obtain higher barley grain yield.

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