Linking Irrigation Farmers to Markets: The Case of Murtute Irrigation Farmers, Ethiopia

This study examines the role of irrigation in farmers’ livelihood development and the importance of linking with market in one of the selected irrigation area in Ethiopia. Irrigation agriculture is considered as one of food security programs in Ethi-opia. It helps farmers to produce more than family consumption and enable to ensure livelihood development. Though irrigation serve as means of development the prevailing situation shows that there has been the missing links in elements of irrigation development related to market, institutions and technology that need to be taken into account. The findings of this study shows that governmental intervention is needed to improve the production and marketing performance of vegetables by providing the necessary support to the small holder farmers in the study area. The linkage of irrigation development with market and livelihood development is implemented in two ways(back and forth).The forward arrow helps to see and analyse the outcomes of irrigation while the back ward linkage shows emphasiz-ing more on the negative out comes and imply the importance of acting on it in order to ensure sustainable livelihood development.