Farmer´s perception on water crop necessities and crop coefficients in the Sierra Norte of Ecuador. Lessons learnt from field surveys.

The optimal determination of the crop water requirements is the probably the most relevant operational variables the farmers managing irrigated lands must set to ensure the optimal use of water for irrigation. The absence of robust crop coefficient estimates constitutes a great limitation for maximizing the performance of agriculture in remote agricultural areas of developing countries. In such areas where despite they usually present optimal environment for cropping activities, technical and knowledge-related barriers strongly limit the development of efficient agriculture and the transference of existing knowledge on the crop coefficient. Seeking to help raise the knowledge on crop coefficient we have studied the local crop coefficient practices in the Sierra Norte of Ecuador area conducting a field research to collect the ongoing practices and farmers´ perceptions. The results from the survey reveal farmers have no information on the crop coefficients and the crop water demands and use rudimentary indicators to implement the irrigation decisions.