TYPE Original Research PUBLISHED 01 December 2022 DOI 10.3389/fsufs.2022.1022410 OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Yanjun Shen, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China REVIEWED BY Justice Gameli Djokoto, Central University, Ghana Jintao Wang, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (CAS), China *CORRESPONDENCE Lerato Phali lerato.phali@up.ac.za Maxwell Mudhara mudhara@ukzn.ac.za SPECIALTY SECTION This article was submitted to Water-Smart Food Production, a section of the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems RECEIVED 18 August 2022 ACCEPTED 10 November 2022 PUBLISHED 01 December 2022 CITATION Phali L, Mudhara M, Ferrer S and Makombe G (2022) Evaluation of water-user performance in smallholder irrigation schemes in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa: A stochastic meta-frontier analysis. Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 6:1022410. doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2022.1022410 COPYRIGHT © 2022 Phali, Mudhara, Ferrer and Makombe. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Evaluation of water-user performance in smallholder irrigation schemes in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa: A stochastic meta-frontier analysis Lerato Phali 1 *, Maxwell Mudhara 2 *, Stuart Ferrer 2 and Godswill Makombe 3 1 Department of Agricultural Economics, Rural Development and Extension, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, 2 Discipline of Agricultural Economics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 3 Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa Smallholder Irrigation Schemes (SIS) are pivotal in sustaining livelihoods and creating employment in rural communities of South Africa. However, despite the revitalization and rehabilitation of SIS by the government, the performance of farmers is still below par. This study evaluates the performance of water-users across four SIS in KwaZulu-Natal Province (KZN). Technical Efficiency was used as a proxy for performance and the Stochastic Meta-Frontier Analysis method was employed to measure the overall efficiency across 306 households. The efficiency model results showed that governance index, psychological capital, land tenure security, credit access and gender affect water-users’ technical efficiency. The study concludes that interventions should be geared toward strengthening institutions and the empowerment of farmers through relevant training and access to credit. Furthermore, adequacy of water and its availability in the schemes should be improved to ensure profitability and productivity of water. KEYWORDS smallholder irrigation scheme, stochastic meta-frontier analysis, technical efficiency, KwaZulu-Natal, governance index Introduction Over the years, climate change has impacted South African agriculture as evident in rapid changes in temperatures and rainfall, which subsequently puts pressure on the demand for water in agricultural production (Bernstein, 2013). As such, irrigation is increasingly becoming a critical factor in enhancing agricultural productivity and consequently alleviating poverty in rural areas (Sinyolo et al., 2014). It is estimated that about 1.3 million hectares of land in South Africa are under irrigation; of which about 0.1 million hectares are under smallholder irrigation schemes (SIS) (Van Averbeke, 2008). Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 01 frontiersin.org