How to Assess Agricultural Water Productivity? Looking for Water in the Agricultural Productivity and Efficiency Literature

Scheierling, Susanne M. ; Treguer, David O. ; Booker, James F. ; Decker, Elisabeth

World Bank Group, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCESS TO WATER;    ACTUAL EVAPOTRANSPIRATION;    AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES;    AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY;    AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6982
RP-ID  :  WPS6982

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Given population and income growth, itis widely expected that the agricultural sector will have toexpand the use of water for irrigation to meet rising fooddemand; at the same time, the competition for waterresources is growing in many regions. As a response, it isincreasingly recommended that efforts should focus onimproving water productivity in agriculture, and significantpublic and private investments are being made with this goalin mind. Yet most public communications are vague on themeaning of agricultural water productivity, and on whatshould be done to improve it. They also tend to emphasizewater as if it were the only input that mattered. This paperpresents findings from a first attempt to survey theagricultural productivity and efficiency literature withregard to the explicit inclusion of water aspects inproductivity and efficiency measurements, with the aim ofcontributing to the discussion on how to assess and possiblyimprove agricultural water productivity. The focus is onstudies applying single-factor productivity measures, totalfactor productivity indices, frontier models, and deductivemodels that incorporate water. A key finding is that moststudies either incorporate field- and basin-level aspectsbut focus only on a single input (water), or they apply amulti-factor approach but do not tackle the basin level. Itseems that no study on agricultural water productivity hasyet presented an approach that accounts for multiple inputsand basin-level issues. However, deductive methods doprovide the flexibility to overcome many of the limitationsof the other methods.