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FINDING A WAY TO LEGALITY, LOCAL COORDINATION MODES ANDPUBLIC POLICIES IN LARGE-SCALE IRRIGATION SCHEMES IN
ALGERIA AND MOROCCOy
M. ERRAHJ1*, M. KUPER2, N. FAYSSE3 AND M. DJEBBARA4
1Ecole Nationale d’Agriculture de Meknes (ENA), Department of Development Engineering, Meknes, Morocco2Centre de Cooperation Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Developpement (CIRAD), UMR G-EAU, Montpellier, France;
Hassan II Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine Institute, Rabat, Morocco3Centre de Cooperation Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Developpement (CIRAD), UMR G-EAU, Montpellier, France;
National School for Agriculture, Meknes, Morocco4National Institute for Agronomy, El Harrach, Algeria
ABSTRACT
The design of public policy related to irrigation sectors in North Africa was often based on the state view. Local
farmers’ organizations, made up of family farms, did not contribute to building the legal framework, which was in
turn unable to propose specific solutions for family farming. Legal reforms currently underway in Morocco and
Algeria show how difficult it is to integrate field realities. Access to land and water resources is often obtained
through informal local coordination modes. The purpose of this paper is to clarify how collective action can
integrate the dynamics of local coordination modes and contribute to the formulation of public policies. The
underlying hypothesis is that by doing so, the public policies can be continuously renewed and will be more
appropriate and robust, and consequently favour rural development. We show that local coordination modes,
presently often invisible or even illegal, can help farmers to go beyond survival strategies by providing access to
more formal development spheres and policy making. These results should encourage development and extension
agencies to redefine collective action as a tool of learning and empowerment centred on the co-construction of
public policies. Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
key words: coordination; family farming; large-scale irrigation; public policies; collective action; Algeria; Morocco
Received 9 March 2009; Revised 19 March 2009; Accepted 20 March 2009
RESUME
La conception des politiques publiques dans les perimetres de grande hydraulique etait dans le passe souvent faite
selon le seul point de vue de l’Etat. Les organisations professionnelles locales des agriculteurs familiaux n’y
contribuaient pas, rendant les politiques publiques souvent peu compatibles avec la dynamique de cette agriculture.
Les reformes en cours au Maroc et en Algerie montrent la difficulte d’integrer des realites de terrain dans la
formulation des politiques publiques. L’acces a l’eau et la terre se fait aujourd’hui souvent a travers des modes de
coordination locaux et informels. L’objectif de l’article est d’analyser comment l’action collective peut integrer la
dynamique des modes de coordination locaux pour ensuite contribuer a la formulation des politiques publiques.
Notre hypothese est que ce faisant, les politiques publiques peuvent etre renouvelees continuellement et seront plus
appropriees et robustes, ce qui contribuera a un developpement rural plus durable. Nos resultats montrent que les
modes de coordination locaux, souvent informels et invisibles, peuvent aider les agriculteurs familiaux a depasser
IRRIGATION AND DRAINAGE
Irrig. and Drain. 58: S358–S369 (2009)
Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/ird.526
*Correspondence to: M. Errahj, Ecole Nationale d’Agriculture de Meknes (ENA), Department of Development Engineeing, Meknes, Morocco.E-mail: [email protected] si les arrangements de proximite nourrissaient les politiques publiques? Une analyse en grande hydraulique en Algerie et au Maroc.
Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
des strategies de « survie » en grande hydraulique, et mettre en place des strategies de developpement. Ces resultats
doivent amener a une redefinition de l’action collective comme moyen d’apprentissage et de negociation pour
aboutir a une co-construction des politiques publiques. Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
mots cles: coordination; agriculture familiale; grande hydraulique; irrigation; politiques publiques; Algerie; Maroc
INTRODUCTION
In the twentieth century, many countries chose hierarchical policies for the coordination of the agricultural sector.
This choice led to the quasi-total control of planning and management of agricultural activities by the state. Such
central coordination concerned (i) access to resources, especially to water and land, (ii) the transformation and
marketing of agricultural products, and (iii) management of rural development in general. This coordination mode
was common in the former member states of the Soviet Union (Lerman, 2001) and also in North Africa
(Bouderbala, 1999). While it is clear that each country has a specific history and political system, their central
coordination modes share certain characteristics: (i) farmers’ organizations created by the state (Gardner and
Lerman, 2006), (ii) cropping patterns determined by the state (Bouderbala, 1977).
During the 1990s, this mode of coordination becameweaker in most countries as a consequence of economic and
political liberalization. In North Africa, the private sector is taking over some of the lucrative formerly state-owned
agri-food industries (sugar factories in Morocco, fruit juice production in Algeria) as well as water management
services (the much cited Guerdane irrigation scheme in Morocco is to be run under a public–private partnership).
The decline of the centralized coordination mode has favoured the emergence of several other coordination modes,
although these are not yet stabilized. In both Morocco and Algeria, local coordination modes are becoming
more and more visible and offer local communities the opportunity to find suitable solutions to their
difficulties, especially access to groundwater or land. On the basis of often contradictory practices, a cooperative
attitude can emerge that reorganizes these practices. Lanneau (1975) refers to local coordination modes as a
‘process of inter-structuring of individuals and institutions’. In some cases, formal farmers’ organizations that used
to be state controlled are becomingmore autonomous and are trying to incorporate many of these local coordination
modes into their official rules. In other cases, when this is too difficult, these local coordination modes remain
informal, although they may constitute the mainstay of a rural economy, feeding the big cities. This is for example
the case with the ‘groundwater economy’ in many parts of the world, based on informal water access (Shah, 2009).
The design of public policy in Algeria and Morocco was formerly often based on the state’s point of view; little
attention was paid to local coordination modes and even less to grassroots power. Local farmers’ organizations,
generally made up of family farms, did not contribute to building the legal framework for public policy, which was
in turn unable to propose specific solutions for family farming. The legal reforms currently under way in Morocco
and Algeria seem to be having difficulty integrating these new realities (Akesbi et al., 2008).
In this context, two orientations appear to guide the formulation of public policies:
� ‘‘prescription’’ of legal reforms that do not take into account local coordination modes, referred to as
‘‘institutional engineering’’ (Mollinga et al., 2007);
� avoidance of coordination problems by delegating to the private sector.
Different authors have reported two major results of the post-central coordination mode. Firstly, in India and
Bulgaria, the importance of unofficial and of previous forms of access to land and water did not decrease under the
new top-down organization (Shah, 2007; Theesfeld, 2004). Secondly, in Eastern Europe, farmers in the ‘‘new’’
professional organizations adhered faithfully to the position they had in the central coordination mode (Lerman,
2004). However, in both cases little interest was shown in collective action, in the sense of (i) integrating and
legitimating informal coordination modes and (ii) a collective learning process, contributing to the formulation of
public policies.
In this paper we aim to show how collective action can integrate the dynamics of local coordination modes and
contribute to the formulation of public policies. We argue that by doing so, public policies can be continuously
renewed and will be more appropriate and robust, and consequently favour rural development.
Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Irrig. and Drain. 58: S358–S369 (2009)
DOI: 10.1002/ird
LOCAL COORDINATION MODES IN IRRIGATION SCHEMES IN ALGERIA AND MOROCCO S359
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGICAL CHOICES
Conceptual framework
Legal framework and public policy. Agricultural development has different meanings and implications
depending on the institutions that define it and also on the socio-political contexts. In all cases, institutions play a
central role in engaging and managing the rhythm of change. In state-oriented economies, institutional reforms
accompany the development of all the strategies and plans. In Algeria and in Morocco, the institutional change was
determined by laws written by political leaders. In contrast, in the bottom-up mode, such change emerges
spontaneously from social norms, customs, traditions, beliefs and values of individuals within a society, with the
written law only formalizing what has already been shaped mainly by the attitudes of individuals (Easterly, 2008).
In Morocco, as in many developing countries, the rural area has always been a state-controlled space and an
important political arena (Leveau, 1985; Naciri, 1999; Akesbi et al., 2008). In this paper we focus on these
dimensions of agricultural development and consider public policy as the expression of a power balance but also as
a social construction that is crucial for sustainable development and sociopolitical stability.
It is generally accepted that the state and the market are the main operators in designing and implementing
agricultural policies, but by considering additional levels of capital (knowledge and social capital; Uphoff, 1999)
new institutions (civil society, cooperatives, etc.) arise and provide evidence that public policy is a collective work
that calls for collaborative thinking and action.
Collective action and local coordination modes. During the last three decades a rich scientific literature
was produced on the concept of collective action. Collective action is a social fact at the crossroads of social
sciences (e.g. Ostrom, 1992). Depending on the scientific field, different meanings are given to this complex idea: a
human structure, a mechanism for interaction and regulation, a rule-producing and stabilization process (Friedberg,
1997). In this paper we chose the last: ‘‘the organizational process by which are crafted, stabilized and coordinated
the behaviour and strategic interactions of a certain number of actors whose interdependence makes the cooperation
indispensable’’.
To better describe and analyse possible interactions between two spheres, the visible sphere of formal
organizations and the often invisibleworld of local coordination modes, we used a conceptual framework (Figure 1)
in which the legal framework is central and is assumed to be a collective construction between political
representation, private sector, the state and farmers’ organizations. In this framework, collective action is a loop
process that can help local coordination modes (informal rules, agreements) to emerge and be integrated in the
formulation of public policies (legitimating). In return, local coordination can be more innovative and appropriate
through a continuous collective thinking process (learning). We privileged in our analysis an up-going process of
legitimating and a down-going process of learning, even though these processes also work in the opposite direction
when the state learns from local and regional collective action.
Methodological choices
This paper is based on field results from a five-year research project conducted in Algeria and Morocco by an
interdisciplinary team. Our entry point was to identify institutions that would be able to empower collective action
in irrigated areas. A comparative approach was used to pinpoint the similarities and the differences between
observations from the case studies. The comparisons were possible because of (i) the early adoption of an analytical
framework for all the field research in both Morocco and Algeria, and (ii) the progressive formulation of common
hypotheses and pertinent dimensions and variables (Kuper et al., 2009). We conducted qualitative and
comprehensive analyses, where we tried to continuously strike a balance between a profound understanding of the
local realities (immersion) and keeping enough distance to avoid losing objectivity (empathic neutrality; Patton,
1990).
We focused on how collective action can integrate local coordination modes into public policies. This topic is
closely linked to the process of organizational change which does not yet have a consensual meaning among
researchers. Van de Ven and Poole (2005) identified four different approaches. They first distinguish between
Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Irrig. and Drain. 58: S358–S369 (2009)
DOI: 10.1002/ird
S360 M. ERRAHJ ET AL.
studies considering the organization as an object versus studies considering the organization as a process. The
second distinction relates to the epistemological difference in studies of change. The first study focuses on
‘explanations, cast in terms of independent variables causing changes in a dependent variable’, while the second is
about ‘‘explanations that tell a narrative . . . about how a sequence of events unfolds to produce a given outcome’’
(Van de Ven and Poole, 2005). Our questions, field methods and theoretical analyses relate mostly to a process-
oriented approach. We implemented this approach by narrating the ‘‘emergent actions and activities by which
collective endeavours unfold’’ through films and interviews. The reason for this choice is the capacity of narrative
materials (mainly videos) to capture complex and informal local coordination modes, and the possibility that this
material offered to explore the trajectories of individuals (logics, motivations) and collective action.
RESULTS
Local coordination modes to obtain access to water and land are often informal, as we show in the different cases
presented here in Algeria and Morocco. These coordination modes are more and more often integrated in formal
farmers’ organizations. This concerns water management, the coordination of agricultural production, and even
rural development. However, the links with public policies remain for the time being rather weak.
Local informal solutions to national problems
The strength of a legal framework is its ‘‘fit’’ to realities and also its ability to change and integrate contextual
changes. In both Morocco and Algeria, this does not appear to be the norm and the examples below demonstrate the
Figure 1. A conceptual framework to analyse the co-construction of a legal framework of agricultural policies. This figure is available in colouronline at www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/ird
Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Irrig. and Drain. 58: S358–S369 (2009)
DOI: 10.1002/ird
LOCAL COORDINATION MODES IN IRRIGATION SCHEMES IN ALGERIA AND MOROCCO S361
big gap between public policies and local realities. The rights and obligations of the Moroccan farmer towards the
state with respect to natural resources are clearly and rigidly defined in the Agricultural Investment Code of 1969. In
large-scale irrigation schemes, the minimum ‘‘viable’’ farm size is 5 ha and it is strictly forbidden for farmers to go
below this limit, even when they have inherited the farm. In practice, the vast majority of the farms in these schemes
are less than 5 ha. If subdivision results in farms less than the minimum viable size, the law does not recognize the
unit and only the ‘‘head’’ of the farm, its manager or a tenant is legally authorized to farm (Zagdouni, 1992). In
Algeria, collective farms were created during the last land reform in 1987 on public land. The collective farms were
supposed to be managed collectively, but in practice, the farms have been divided between the assignees and
informal arrangements allow farmers to obtain access to land and water (Imache et al., 2009, this issue).
1. Informal access to land and water in the Mitidja and Tadla irrigation schemes. Both in Mitidja
(Algeria) and Tadla (Morocco), a considerable part of the land is cultivated by tenants, lessees, and associates,
whose presence is generally not officially recognized due to rigid land policies that were proclaimed to avoid the
division of land. In Algeria, collective farms are currently informally divided between the assignees, even though
the legal framework does not allow this (Imache et al., this issue). It is now common to distinguish between united
and subdivided collective farms. According to our data, in the Mouzaıa district, 73% of the 182 collective farms
were de facto subdivided in 2006. This accepted categorization illustrates the ambivalence in the state position in
rural development policies. In addition, many informal adjustments are made between the assignees and lessees.
Our survey in 2006 in Mouzaıa showed that more than a third of the collective farms rented out part of their land to
lessees. For contracts over 5 years, a notarial act generally exists, even though the document has little legal value.
The lessee is generally free to choose the crops he wants to grow and may even plant citrus or apple orchards. For
short-term leases, there is no such act. In this case, the two parties agree on the crop that will be grown (mainly
horticulture, especially green peppers), and on access to irrigation water.
In the Tadla scheme in Morocco, about one-third of the land is not owner-operated. This land is either cultivated
by tenants or by ‘‘associates’’ who have come to an informal arrangement with the landowner. Often, the landowner
makes both the land and access to (ground) water available, while the other associate is responsible for crop-related
activities and costs. After the harvest, the two parties share the profits according to their prior agreement.
In Tadla, the great majority of arrangements around water concern ‘‘illicit’’ tubewells (more than 8300 within the
irrigation scheme; Hammani et al., 2009, this issue), as the availability of surface water is decreasing. According to
our survey in 2006, two-thirds of the (tube)wells come under these unofficial arrangements. The importance of
these groundwater arrangements is even greater in the Mitidja scheme, where surface water is only sporadically
available (280 tubewells in the 5600 ha Mouzaıa district). Numerous arrangements enable most farmers to obtain
access to groundwater, including informal lessees. Without this access, it would not be possible to irrigate high-
value crops such as citrus orchards and horticultural crops. The informal arrangements range from (i) a joint
investment by a group of farmers (borehole, pump, engine, etc.), (ii) the collective use of a tubewell inherited from
parents (Tadla) or from the state-owned estates that were dissolved in 1987 (Mitidja), and (iii) one-off transactions.
The logic of these arrangements varies considerably (Figure 2). There are ‘‘capitalistic’’ arrangements, often
between landowners and lessees (Mitidja, Tadla). The arrangements for access to groundwater are generally
intermingled with other production factors. For instance, the landowner provides the land and the tubewell
infrastructure, the lessee the agricultural inputs and the running costs (fuel) of the tubewell. They then share the
profits after harvest. There are also arrangements based on mutualism, where two or more brothers or neighbours
share the investment or the running costs of a tubewell. Thirdly, there are one-off arrangements based on solidarity.
When a neighbour is in dire straits with a crop requiring water and no immediate solution, farmers provide water,
sometimes even free of cost.
2. ‘‘Unauthorized’’ water extraction from the Boumaız Transfer canal in the gharb. The Gharb
irrigation scheme (Morocco) is located in an area with plenty of water, as it is situated downstream of huge dams
(over 5 billion m3 of water stored annually). However, this large-scale irrigation scheme unavoidably left many
farms without access to water. In addition, there are certain areas within the perimeter that face severe water
shortage. In order to deal with this issue, in 1993 the irrigation agency transformed an old drain into a canal to
transfer water from a river with sufficient water to two irrigation sectors facing water shortage. Farmers located
Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Irrig. and Drain. 58: S358–S369 (2009)
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S362 M. ERRAHJ ET AL.
alongside the Boumaız transfer canal – labelled by engineers a ‘‘water highway’’ – were either outside the official
irrigation boundaries or were inside these boundaries but also faced water shortage. Seeing thewater, which was not
meant for them, flowing by, farmers started to irrigate their crops using small pumps. In the beginning, they were
prosecuted by the irrigation agency who called the police to stop these farmers using the Boumaız water informally.
However, due to severe droughts, this practice became so widespread that it was virtually impossible to stop it. In
2003, an estimated 1300 ha was irrigated via this canal for crops such as sugar beet, orchards, forage crops and
cereals. The irrigation agency consequently decided to tolerate the practice and agreed on a water fee with the
farmers. This is typically one of the arrangements described by Lees (1986) between the state agency and farmers,
enabling ‘‘a rigid regulatory system to persist by simultaneously creating and disguising operational flexibility’’.
The agency faced some difficulties in collecting the water fees, as is the case in the official perimeter. However,
farmers growing sugar beet had the water fees deducted from the money they received for their harvest by the state-
owned factory. Interestingly, the farmers downstream who were supposed to benefit from the Boumaız canal were
quite tolerant as regards the informal practices of farmers located along the canal (‘‘we would do the same thing in
their situation’’), even though they suffered a lot from them (Errahj et al., 2005).
More and more solid links between collective action and local coordination modes
1. Crafting institutions in the Moyen Sebou irrigation scheme. The Moyen Sebou is a medium-scale
irrigation scheme (6500 ha) located in northern Morocco. It is a part of a bigger project that aims to irrigate 15
000 ha. The first part was implemented from 1995 to 2001 and has a hybrid configuration. On the one hand, the
hydraulic design is the same as for large-scale irrigation schemes with heavy equipment that requires considerable
coordination. On the other hand, water management is the responsibility of 12 water users’ associations (WUAs)
that belong to two federations.
Figure 2. Typology of arrangements of access to groundwater for irrigation according to their logic. This figure is available in colour online atwww.interscience.wiley.com/journal/ird
Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Irrig. and Drain. 58: S358–S369 (2009)
DOI: 10.1002/ird
LOCAL COORDINATION MODES IN IRRIGATION SCHEMES IN ALGERIA AND MOROCCO S363
The administration provided support for theWUAs during a 5-year transitional period by assigning technical and
managerial staff. The federations and the WUAs were supposed to take increasing responsibility for managing the
scheme, including scheduling the water turns, supervising hydraulic functioning, and collecting water fees. The
WUA, which is the main legal tool decreed in the 10/1995Moroccan water law, is now facing serious difficulties in
all large- scale irrigation schemes (Herzenni, 2002). However, in the Moyen Sebou context and specifically in the
Sebou Federation, farmers have made great efforts to adapt their WUAs to make them stronger and more efficient
(Kadiri et al., 2009, this issue). The appropriation of the irrigation associations is the logical result of the continuous
efforts of integration of new rules that correspond to local measures adopted by farmers not included in the legal
framework. The capacity of the WUAs to incorporate and legitimate these local coordination modes makes them
more adaptive. They remain firmly rooted in their local context without losing any of the advantages of being part of
a public policy framework.
One of the most spectacular adaptations made by the WUAs is supplying water to farmers located outside the
official perimeter while demanding higher fees than those paid by members of the WUA. This practice used to be
informal and was even illegal according to the borders of the association, so the farmers jointly decided to change
the rules, thereby adapting the geometry of the institution to the changing hydraulic geometry. Ostrom (1992)
identified the ability to define the borders as one of the nine principles of collective resource management. The
farmers who belonged to the Sebou federation also adopted a progressive penalty scale that is a mixture of local and
informal punishment (such as having to invite the members of the community to lunch) and official and more
common ones (e.g. financial penalties).
2. Linking social development to an economic tool: milk cooperatives in the Tadla. There are 84 milk
cooperatives in the Tadla irrigation scheme, most of which were originally created by the state. Through a long
process of appropriation, local farmers have incorporated these cooperatives in their respective communities
(Kuper et al., 2009). Parallel to the process of political liberalization, these cooperatives integrated principles of
democracy (blind vote, rotating membership of the management board, etc.) and have renewed their leaders. These
leaders are now selected not only for their links with the administration, but primarily for their competence
(Bouzidi et al., 2009; Faysse et al., 2009). The great majority of these milk cooperatives expanded the mandate of
their cooperative and now play a role in the promotion of dairy farming by selling animal feed and small equipment
(small milking machines, milk cans). They have also moved into the social arena (health, education, drinking water,
access to the village, etc.), thus reinforcing the links with local communities. By providing funds but also an
organizational platform for social activities that can be used by the entire community (and not only by members of
the cooperative), these cooperatives contribute significantly to local development. Among the services provided by
cooperatives are health insurance for farmers, setting up a dispensary in the cooperative building, acquiring an
ambulance, contributing to building roads, creating a pre-nursery school, providing access to the Internet,
negotiating with the national drinking water administration for the village community. In some cases, local
development associations are created in order to separate their accounts from those of the milk cooperatives.
Previous work in the Doukkala irrigation scheme showed that milk collection cooperatives play much the same role
there (Kemmoun et al., 2004).
Weak links between collective action and public policies
Moroccan rural society used to have strong functioning local organizations in agriculture and natural resource
management (pastures and forest, irrigation, land tenure; El Faız, 2005). Each community had its own Jmaa, which
is a council of wise men. In 1919, this informal institution with a strong capacity for mobilizing people and
implementing rules obtained legal status as a ‘‘moral person’’ under the French protectorate. This decree focused on
the land tenure of community land and had a double objective: (i) to promote the interests of the colonial power who
wanted to develop ‘‘unsoiled’’ colonization compared to practices in Algeria (Bouderbala, 1999) and (ii) to set
aside land to make it available for European farmers (Karsenty, 1995). The Jmaa began to lose vigour, especially in
the plains, because of close state supervision. For reasons of ‘‘pacification’’, the state supported the local nobility in
order to increase its power in the rural territories.
Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Irrig. and Drain. 58: S358–S369 (2009)
DOI: 10.1002/ird
S364 M. ERRAHJ ET AL.
After independence, Algeria and Morocco made different choices. Algeria adopted a nationalization policy
including strict state control of land and production. Morocco maintained a composite society (Akesbi et al., 2008)
with dualist sectors: traditional and modern agriculture. In both countries, the administration had a central position
in the arena of agricultural development. However, in the early 1980s, the attitude of the state towards the NGOs
began to change for several overlapping reasons (Bessaoud, 2005): (i) adoption of structural adjustment policies,
and (ii) external pressure for greater democratic freedom and decentralization.
Up until now, many professional organizations have been in charge of representing farmers on a territorial
(chambers of agriculture), production or service basis (producers’ associations, regional cooperatives, WUAs, etc).
Many studies have shown that the links between these organizations, especially the regional ones, and the farmers
were weak (Djebbara et al., 2007) and continue today to be what Bessaoud (2005) called ‘‘appendix
organizations’’. They were almost an extension of the administration, managing projects or services for different
government services. The regional organizations for sugar beet and sugar cane producers in large-scale irrigation
schemes, for example, were often criticized by farmers who said: ‘‘we do not know them’’, ‘‘it was them who
created the association, not us’’ (Kemmoun et al., 2004).
However, in some cases, we observed the foundations of strong and functioning professional organizations with
all the necessary political legitimacy and grassroots power. The Copag (milk, citrus and vegetable cooperative in
southern Morocco) is one of these emerging structures that succeeded in changing the attitudes and the ability of
small farmers to deal with modernization. It also changed the attitude of the government services which began to
subcontract many technical activities to this huge cooperative (for example, the national campaign for vaccination
against tuberculosis) and to integrate this model in the ongoing agricultural policy (the ‘‘Green plan’’).
DISCUSSION
Local coordination modes as a driver for sustainable rural development
The hypothesis underlying this comparative study was that public policies can be continuously renewed and as a
result will be more appropriate and robust, and will favour sustainable rural development. The main ideas that
emerge from the cases examined in this paper are:
� local coordination modes offer considerable opportunities to farmers to solve actual problems, but continue to
put them in a weak position with respect to bureaucracy and speculators;
� formal farmers’ organizations are stronger when they go beyond their objective function (Lanneau, 1975;
Shah, 1995);
� the strength of regional and national farmers’ organizations depends to a great extent on their local roots.
Analysis of the different processes in Algeria and Morocco clearly showed that the farmers often succeeded in
finding local institutional solutions. Such innovations are often volatile (for example the collective pumping in the
Boumaız canal or the arrangements concerning groundwater in Tadla and Mitidja) and tightly linked to relations
with neighbours or family, which means they cannot be stabilized and integrated into the global society or public
policies. Other kinds of innovations are more generic (land markets in Mitidja, capitalist and mutualist
arrangements for accessing groundwater) and need to be officially recognized by society to avoid farmers who are
involved in these coordination modes continuing to be faced with schizophrenic situations. On one hand, they
function in an illegal and insecure context, but on the other the results of their coordination are recognized by the
state and the markets, as shown by the production of green peppers in the Mitidja plain. Although this perpetual
ambivalence produces creative ideas in local communities, it strengthens the asymmetric balance of power between
farmers on the one hand, and intermediaries and the bureaucracy on the other.
The results of the analyses of the milk cooperatives in Tadla and the WUAs in the Moyen Sebou irrigation
scheme show that formal farmers’ organizations become stronger when they continue to adjust their mandate and
their activities to a changing environment, going beyond their objective function. This is in line with the ‘‘salience’’
theory of Shah (1995): farmers’ organizations are successful when they continuously search to become central to
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LOCAL COORDINATION MODES IN IRRIGATION SCHEMES IN ALGERIA AND MOROCCO S365
‘‘the lives of their members, to the business in which they compete, and to the economy of their domain’’. These
organizations thus transform themselves from being ‘‘peripheral and inconsequential to their members, their
business and the economy of their domain to becoming central and consequential’’ (Shah, 1995).
Rural communities in Algeria and Morocco have lost confidence in coordination in regional and national
farmers’ organizations at the supra-local level, and since they did not participate in the design of public policies
they also lost out in terms of learning. National and regional cooperatives, associations and chambers of agriculture
are usually perceived to be outside organizations, and a new learning process is needed to change these perceptions.
These negative perceptions are linked to a long history of state-created ‘‘appendix’’ organizations. The
‘‘modernization’’ of the rural world was an early choice in Morocco, but the meaning of modernization was
generally reduced to its technical dimension and avoided the emergence of local political counter-powers (Naciri,
1999). Early in the 1940s Berque and Couleau (1945) proposed a global transformation of the implementation of
the program for the modernization of the ‘‘peasant’’ sectors (SMP, secteurs de modernisation du paysanat). The
main idea was to provide schooling, health care and agricultural extension and services to the farmers and their
local institutions (Jmaa). The first SMPs were implemented in keeping with this view but the protectorate
administration preferred to abandon the Jmaa as a central actor in the process. A similar fate attended the proposed
institutional configuration of large-scale irrigation schemes in the 1960s at the time of planning the Gharb scheme.
The village development enterprises (SDV, societes villageoises de developpement), proposed as a framework for
coordination and development, were discarded and replaced with a heavy legal structure (agricultural investment
code).
Maintaining a process of public policies excluding the contributions of local farmers’ organizations may not
solve insecurity in terms of land tenure and access to water. This situation will result in low financial investments by
family farmers and will hamper the emergence of citizenship (Hammoudi, 1997). If farmers remain in the invisible
world of informal arrangements, it will increase the chance of domination by ‘‘opportunist’’ investments, which are
unsustainable both in social and in ecological terms.
The recent success of a regional farmers’ organization in Morocco to contribute to the formulation of public
policies, shows the potential of a family-based agriculture (constituting by far the dominant model in irrigated
agriculture in North Africa) to make constructive proposals for more adapted public policies. These public policies
will need to take into account the specificities of this family-based agriculture including their land tenure, access to
water, and credit facilities. In opposition to Lees’ (1986) analysis, the farmers’ strategies observed in large-scale
irrigation schemes in North Africa are more than just survival strategies in a new context of political and economic
liberalization; they represent development strategies both in terms of the core business (water management,
agricultural production), but also for rural development in general. However, the success of the newly emerging
subsector farmers’ organizations, such as Copag in Morocco, should not mask the vulnerability of family farms in
their access to financial means and technology in a context of incompatibility between legal frameworks and local
conditions. Likewise, it should not tempt policy makers to reduce a long step-by-step process through the rapid
creation of empty shells.
Pertinence of the conceptual framework for a comparative analysis of the contributionsof local coordination modes to public policies
By applying the conceptual framework to the case studies, we observed that a process of legitimation is
happening in flexible and credible organizations (WUAs in the Moyen Sebou, milk cooperatives in Tadla, Copag).
These are functioning formal farmers’ organizations either at the local or regional level. In other situations, the
official farmers’ organizations and the state continue to ignore local dynamics, even though many of the local
arrangements that have developed would also help them solve difficulties related to the access to water and land
(Tadla, Mitidja, Boumaiz) in line with the arguments of Lees (1986). This attitude widens the gap between the two
worlds (visible and invisible) and encourages the expansion of speculative and opportunist actors.
The learning process from regional organizations to local coordination modes (Moyen Sebou, Copag, Tadla milk
cooperatives), which enables local creativity and the transfer of knowledge from one sphere to the other, is still
hardly noticeable in most of the case studies. Local coordination modes continue to depend mainly on local
knowledge systems. This kind of knowledge is strong because of its pragmatism and local adaptations, but suffers
Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Irrig. and Drain. 58: S358–S369 (2009)
DOI: 10.1002/ird
S366 M. ERRAHJ ET AL.
from its lack of transferability and its limited ability to forecast contextual changes (Bodiguel, 1975; Darre, 2006).
Only cross-fertilization between local and global knowledge systems can enable local productivity and guarantee
its compatibility with global constraints and strategies (Roling and Wagemakers, 2000).
Our comparative study has shown original equivalences between the Algerian and Moroccan large-scale
irrigation schemes. However, this should not mask specific social trajectories. At a macro level, early on the two
countries made different political choices that can be summarized as targeting a composite society versus a
transition society (Pascon, 1970; Akesbi et al., 2008). At the regional level, the schemes we studied face different
constraints and have different sociocultural characteristics, and even at the local level, the family farming is not as
homogeneous as it appears. These objective differences offered us the opportunity to use comparable but also
complementary case studies as regards the processes of learning and legitimating (Table I).
In all the case studies, the farmers showed their capacity to produce local innovations, thereby illustrating the
vitality of the local knowledge systems. This is particularly the case for the groundwater and tenure arrangements in
the Mitidja plain, and the water ‘‘thieves’’ along the Boumaız canal, two systems that function under considerable
legal constraints.
On the other hand, in the case of functioning farmers’ organizations (locally rooted, credible) we observed that
the local innovations meet global knowledge systems that produce more sustainable and universal solutions, as is
the case in the Moyen Sebou (Kadiri et al., 2009, this issue) and for the milk cooperatives. At the same time, the
legitimating processes are on track in legitimizing illicit practices and in reducing the chance of speculation and
opportunism.
In the case of the Boumaız canal, located in the large-scale Gharb irrigation scheme, there is an apparent
disagreement with our conceptual framework, as collective action produced a certain legitimacy without a learning
process. The farmers, whose illegal practices were tolerated and who became de facto irrigators, were not further
accompanied by extension agents, irrigation remained meagre and the irrigation infrastructure was not improved
(inefficient individual pumps, makeshift field channels). This apparent legitimacy can be explained by (1) strong
local objections that took on a social dimension and (2) a one-off convergence between farmers’ objectives and
those of the irrigation agency. It is interesting to note that less than 50 km away, in the Moyen Sebou irrigation
scheme, government agencies and farmers’ organizations were able to engage in both learning as well as
legitimating tracks. While this spatial differentiation shows the scope for organizational change in large-scale
irrigation schemes, it also pinpoints the important of the local and historical contexts.
Even considering these limitations, we firmly believe that the co-construction of legal frameworks through
functioning farmers’ organizations offers better guarantees for sustainable and equitable agricultural development.
CONCLUSION
The purpose of this paper was to clarify how collective action can integrate the dynamics of local coordination
modes and contribute to the formulation of public policies. The cases presented and examined show clearly that
Table I. Comparison of the learning and legitimating processes in the different case studies
Processes Learning Legitimating
Levels/dimensions Localinnovations
Co-construction withthe global knowledge
From local toregional level
From regionalto national level
Gharb Surface water ����� ��
Mitidja Groundwater �����
Land tenure �����
Moyen Sebou Surface water ��� ��� ���
Sous Milk ��� ���� ���� ���
Tadla Groundwater ���
Milk ��� ��� ���
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LOCAL COORDINATION MODES IN IRRIGATION SCHEMES IN ALGERIA AND MOROCCO S367
local communities adopt three types of behaviour towards central coordination modes: (1) they create, outside
formal organizations, progressive rules able to integrate specific situations; (2) they adapt formal organizational
boundaries and rules to incorporate new solutions (voice, see Hirschman, 1970); and (3) they quit (exit; Hirschman,
1970) formal structures/choices when alternative possibilities are offered (groundwater vs surface water).
The second finding refers to what Lees (1986) described as survival strategies. We showed that the local
coordination modes can help farmers to go beyond survival by providing access to a development sphere where the
universe of solutions is richer and more adaptive. The most important illustration of this point is the strength of
functioning regional farmers’ organizations and their ability to influence public policies (Copag).
The third finding is linked to knowledge system theories (Lanneau, 1975; Roling and Wagemakers, 2000). We
believe that the learning processes are more robust when knowledge production is based on cross-fertilization
between global and local knowledge systems. This is only possible when legitimating processes are operational.
All these results should encourage development and extension agencies to redefine collective action as a tool of
learning and empowerment centred on the co-construction of public policies. This recommendation is logically
linked to redefining the platform of agricultural extension and development engineering. Oneway of contributing to
redefining this platform would be to analyse the process of integration of rules in formal organizations (channels,
mechanisms, rhythm, leadership) in irrigation schemes in North Africa.
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