Technical and allocative efficiency of irrigation water use in the Guanzhong Plain, China

Abstract

a b s t r a c tDue to increasing water scarcity, accelerating industrialization and urbanization, efficiency of irrigation water use in Northern China needs urgent improvement. Based on a sample of 347 wheat growers in the Guanzhong Plain, this paper simultaneously estimates a production function, and its corresponding first-order conditions for cost minimization, to analyze efficiency of irrigation water use. The main findings are that average technical, allocative, and overall economic efficiency are 0.35, 0.86 and 0.80, respectively. In a second stage analysis, we find that farmers' perception of water scarcity, water price and irrigation infrastructure increase irrigation water allocative efficiency, while land fragmentation decreases it. We also show that farmers' income loss due to higher water prices can be offset by increasing irrigation water use efficiency.

Impacts of Off-Farm Employment on Irrigation Water Efficiency in North China

“…On the other hand, the "income effect" can increase IWE. For instance, Tang et al has reported a significant positive relationship between income and technical efficiency of irrigation water use [13]. First, off-farm income can be used to finance irrigation investment, which helps farmers get higher IWE.…”

“…Estimating Equation (4) generates direct estimates of input-oriented technical inefficiency. Most previous studies have used an output-oriented approach and derived input technical efficiency from the regression results [9][10][11][12][13]. Moreover, we can employ the one-step approach by estimating Equation (4) together with Equation (5), which is expressed as…”

“…Studies have examined the relationship between irrigation water efficiency and other factors, including farm household characteristics (e.g., age, education, family labor, income levels and access to credit), land characteristics (e.g., farm size, degree of land fragmentation, soil quality and land ownership) and households' access to other resources such as extension services and farm skills training [9][10][11][12][13]. One additional factor often considered is the perception of water scarcity by household members who make decisions on agricultural production activities.…”

“…Nevertheless, income from off-farm employment can help alleviate or remove the credit constraints of rural households and may be used to finance irrigation investment to obtain higher IWE. It has been found that households spending more time on farming have lower IWE and that there is a significant positive relationship between household total income and IWE [13]. Karagiannis et al found that off-farm income significantly affects production efficiency but has no significant impact on IWE [9].…”

Levels of Technical, Allocative, and Groundwater Use Efficiency and the Factors Affecting the Allocative Efficiency of Wheat Farmers in Pakistan

“…Although technical and groundwater use efficiency provides important information about the management practices of farmers, these indicators do not explain farmers' ability to allocate irrigation water and other inputs to their cost-minimising input proportions [25]. Information about allocative efficiency and its determinants provides crucial help to policy makers in devising policies for expediting rural development and increasing farm income [26,27].…”