Farmers’ perceptions on irrigation water contamination, health risks and risk management measures in prominent wastewater-irrigated vegetable farming sites of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Desta Woldetsadik (), Pay Drechsel (), Bernard Keraita (), Fisseha Itanna () and Heluf Gebrekidan ()
Additional contact information
Desta Woldetsadik: Haramaya University
Pay Drechsel: International Water Management Institute
Bernard Keraita: University of Copenhagen
Fisseha Itanna: University of Namibia
Heluf Gebrekidan: Haramaya University

Environment Systems and Decisions, 2018, vol. 38, issue 1, 52-64

Abstract: Abstract The use of wastewater to produce food crops particularly vegetables is very prevalent in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This practice may pose health risks to farm workers and consumers. Hence, the study was designed to evaluate farmers’ perceptions on irrigation water quality, health risks and health risk mitigation measures in four wastewater-irrigated urban vegetable farming sites in Addis Ababa. Data were collected on farm through 263 individual interviews and 12 focus group discussions. The findings showed that despite differences in levels of knowledge and awareness on health risks, farmers appear informed about the contamination of their irrigation water. The difference in perception to quality consideration of Akaki River/irrigation water is highlighted by the result of Kruskal–Wallis H test analysis which shows significant mean value (1.33) of positive perception toward the water quality by male than female farmers. Interestingly, significant difference (p

Keywords: Wastewater; Irrigation; Farmers’ perception; Health risks; Health risk reduction measures; Educational programs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10669-017-9665-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:envsyd:v:38:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s10669-017-9665-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/10669

DOI: 10.1007/s10669-017-9665-2

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment Systems and Decisions from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().