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In the semi-arid lands of southern Kenya, a dynamic process of farmer-led irrigation has developed over the past two decades. It is characterised by short-term agreements to access land and water. Resident and migrant farmers, capital providers and local landowners have engaged in diverse partnerships to benefit from water and land along the Olkeriai sand river. This study aims to unravel which actors and motives drive the resulting highly dynamic forms of irrigation. Surveys, in-depth interviews and mapping exercises with farmers, capital providers and landowners were conducted over a period of 1.5 years. The results show that involved actors favour short-term lease and partnership arrangements and farmers frequently change fields along the river or leave the area and return. It is primarily the migrant farmers and capital providers who take decisions on when and where to move. They are informed by their experience with production factors, financial gains and losses, partner relations, or the ability to expand. We conclude that individualisation of land rights, migration, abundance of water, proximate markets, and rural-urban networks are instrumental to the emergence of this dynamic form of agriculture. Farmers have found a degree of security in flexibility, to access land and water in shifting fields and partners, rather than in property rights for specific plots. Yet, the short-term scope of these operations for monetary gains raises concerns about the sustainable use of land and water resources in the region.

Developing countries frequently find their poverty reduction initiatives to be at odds with promotion of sustainable practices. In India too, agricultural intensification through horticulture cultivation is an important government strategy to raise farm incomes but its mechanisms and implications have not been critically analyzed. Our objective is to characterize this intensification and explore conditions under which its goals may be achieved while ensuring equity in access to ecological services and resilience of the social-ecological system (SES). Our focal SES is the water-constrained farm system of western India that overlays shallow hard-rock aquifers common to the Indian peninsula. We document farm decisions and coping strategies of 121 farmers over two consecutive years: a drought year and a good rainfall year. We find that farmers are driven to high-value horticulture to remain economically viable in the face of increasing social-ecological vulnerability due to factors such as monsoon variability, high groundwater development, and uncertainty in irrigation access. Through systems modeling, we uncover the feedback loops that propagate risk. Risk in access to water, in part due to monsoon dry spells, starts a cycle of expensive investments often requiring large loans to assure access and a simultaneous move to horticulture in response to the elevated cost of water. This mitigates risk for the farmer in the short run but, in the absence of regulation and complete information about the common groundwater pool, leads to competitive investments, driving the regime to greater uncertainty levels for the entire community. This vicious cycle of investment and intensification escalates risk, leading to frequent crop failure, farmer indebtedness, and the tragedy of the commons. Government interventions further catalyze this. We propose alternate leverage points to enhance social comprehension of risk and facilitate collective action so as to negotiate room for human needs while remaining within biophysical boundaries.