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Efficient water use for sustainable irrigation industry
Citation
Azad, MAS and Ancev, T and Hernandez-Sancho, F, Efficient water use for sustainable irrigation industry, Water Resources Management: an international journal, 29, (5) pp. 1683-1696. ISSN 0920-4741 (2014) [Refereed Article]
Copyright Statement
Copyright 2014 Springer Science+Business Media
DOI: doi:10.1007/s11269-014-0904-8
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the economic efficiency of irrigated
agricultural enterprises using a non-radial data envelopment analysis approach. While a
number of studies have used radial measures based on data envelopment analysis to
obtain efficiency scores for a given production technology, we calculate non-radial
measures to understand the efficiency of using individual inputs employed in the production
process. In particular, the measures of economic efficiency are decomposed into
water use efficiency and managerial efficiency. This decomposition enables us to obtain
an efficiency score for the use of water as an environmentally sensitive input in irrigated
crop production systems. Treating water input in this way goes beyond traditional
measurement of water use efficiency, as the calculated efficiency scores can be used as
indicators of sustainability in terms of water withdrawals for irrigation purposes. The
results show that the overall efficiency for the considered irrigated enterprises is quite
high. This is in contrast to the findings on the water use efficiency scores, which are
fairly low. This indicates that while Australian irrigated farms are comparatively more
efficient in overall farm activity management, they are not very efficient in managing
water resources. In turn, this threatens the sustainability of this industry. There is a
substantial variation of water use efficiency scores across irrigated enterprises and across
regions. Analysing these variations can provide important insights for current policy and
for future efforts to improve water use efficiency that will lead towards more sustainable
irrigation industry.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
---|---|
Keywords: | Irrigation water use . Efficiency measurement . Non-radial DEA |
Research Division: | Economics |
Research Group: | Applied economics |
Research Field: | Environment and resource economics |
Objective Division: | Economic Framework |
Objective Group: | Management and productivity |
Objective Field: | Productivity (excl. public sector) |
UTAS Author: | Azad, MAS (Dr Samad Azad) |
ID Code: | 99374 |
Year Published: | 2014 |
Web of Science® Times Cited: | 26 |
Deposited By: | TSBE |
Deposited On: | 2015-03-23 |
Last Modified: | 2015-10-30 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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