Sheladia Associates, Inc.

The project’s objective was to raise agricultural productivity through investments in small-scale FMIS, targeting poorer, less-developed villages in six provinces. Small FMIS constitute large shares of Indonesia’s farmers and cultivated area, but lag in productivity. These systems are generally farmer-constructed, located in remote and hilly areas, and under local community control. The potential for increasing national agricultural production for a relatively modest investment in FMIS is substantial.

Sheladia collaborated with its domestic consultant partners to strengthen capacity of relevant agencies at district and subdistrict levels through:

• Rehabilitation and improvement of FMIS based on readiness and capacity of district and subdistrict staff to implement subprojects and a screening and evaluation process to identify potential sites
• Strengthening of WUAs and District Services through training and institutional development support to increase their capacities to assist farmer groups in designing small-scale physical irrigation improvements, registering WUAs, and improving their agricultural production, through a series of 20 district, provincial, and national workshops that were developed and implemented with logistic support provided for 30 participants each.
• Strengthening of DGWRD and District Water Resources Services’ ability to administer the project through training and assistance in standardizing simplified engineering designs, provision of guidelines and handbooks, and the development and installation of a simple Project Benefit Monitoring and Evaluation System.

During implementation, consulting services were expanded to support more work on O&M activities and community organization. The original project design had one community organizer per province, but this was found to be unrealistically low in view of the wide differences in the number of FMISs among the province.