Irrigated agriculture plays a major role in food security, producing nearly 40 percent (%) of
food and agricultural commodities. It uses more than 80% of the water withdrawn from the
earth’s rivers. This increased pressure to water as a valuable resource in agricultural food
production which remains finite due to the competition of current and future events namely;
rapid increase in world population, climatic change, agricultural and industrial sector
activities. In order to conserve and able to produce food continuously; an efficient water use
and crop yield improving agricultural practices need to be adapted and implemented.
Therefore, this study is an assessment of the irrigation system efficiency based on water use
and production efficiency between drip and sprinkler on three vegetable crops (cabbage,
tomato, and pepper), grown at small-scale on North-central Namibia. The study assumes four
hypothesis; 1) production input costs, planted field size, types of fertilizer, stakeholder visits,
and agricultural soil practices have positive effects on the production efficiency of both three
crops under the two irrigation system,
2) Socio factors; age and sex have no influence on
production yield efficiency in both irrigation systems, 3) drip irrigation to use less water cost
with fewer outputs and 4) irrigation systems and total water cost per ha expected to have an
effect on the outputs. The study was contacted through data collection whereby small-scale
farmers were interviewed using a structural questionnaire. Data were analyzed in R software,
whereby three statistical linear regression model such as; backward selection model, Akaike
information criterion and interactions were used to measure the objectives. Among production
inputs costs; water and fertilizer were found to be important determinants, of production
efficiency in all three vegetables under both two irrigation systems. Age of the farmer,
stakeholder visit, and agricultural soil practices (only; mulching) were found to have positive
effects only on tomato and cabbage production efficiency under drip irrigation. The
relationship between water use and irrigation systems was not significant, neither crop yield
difference was not observed between drip and sprinkler irrigation systems. However, the
statistical findings contradict the findings based on opinions and observations of farmers on
crop yield and water use; which concluded that drip is more efficient relative to sprinkler
irrigation. Together these results highlighted no clear difference between drip and sprinkler on
water use and irrigation production efficiency on North-central Namibia, however, if proper
agricultural water conservation practices and inputs subsidies are implemented among drip
irrigation farmers, an efficiency difference between the two irrigation systems will be seen.