Aymen Frija

Effect of water scarcity on groundwater use efficiency in the rice sector of Karnataka: a case study

Scarcity of a resource is proven to cause prudent and efficient use in many cases. This is contradicted in other studies where common property resource is shown as heavily abstracted in the face of scarcity. Our paper provides a field level examination of the ground water scarcity–use efficiency nexus using causal inference theory. We use data from villages of Madhugiri, Karnataka where groundwater is increasingly becoming a scarce resource. Groundwater Use Efficiency (GWUE) scores are calculated using the concept of sub-vector efficiency in Data Envelopment Analysis. The inefficiencies are then traced to the farm level scarcity indicators using Inverse Probability Weighting method. We use farm level proxies as scarcity indicators such as the age of irrigation! wells, irrigation investment cost and number of wells at farm level. Our study finds that water scarcity affects the GWUE negatively when conditioned on other confounders pointing to higher abstraction behavior in the face of scarcity. This result indicates that maintaining water availability levels at farm level would help in improving GWUE scores.

Economic and Technical Evaluation of Different Irrigation Systems for Date Palm Farming System in the GCC Countries: Case of Oman

In the frame of the ICARDA project “Development of sustainable date palm production systems in the GCC countries of the Arabian Peninsula”, researchers succeeded to introduce one promising technology (subsurface drip irrigation - SDI) in the date palm farming system in the Gulf region, defined as the poorest in the word in terms of water resources. In the light of these challenges, the main objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of the irrigation water volumes on the date palm productivity and water use efficiency under several conventional and improved irrigations systems.Three intervention levels on SDI have been used: at the rate of 60% 40% and 20% of water requirement. Results of this experimental study showed that SDI under the three intervention/options uses water more efficient in comparison to BI. Indeed, a considerable quantity of water for about 3545.554, 5726.45, and 7565.473 m3/ha could be saved by using SDI at the rate of 20%, 40 and 60% of water requirements, respectively. Thus, the WUE indicator is for about 2.0, 2.7, and 4.7 kg/m3, respectively. These figures are much higher when are compared to BI system where WUE is around 1.3 kgm-3.The economic evaluation suggests that under BI system, the total return, total variable costs, water costs and net profit were 20211.36, 5857.81, 1224.29, and 13129.25

Efficiency Change, Technological Progress and Sources of Long Term Agricultural Productivity Growth in Selected MENA Countries

ha-1, respectively. From another hand, by using SDI at the rate of 60% of water requirements, we note a slight difference in net profit when using this irrigation system, which is about US

How Investment in RD&E Offset the Negative Impact of Climate Change on the Tunisian Agricultural Productivity Sector

12825.02/ha. Economic findings suggest that using SDI method versus BI method have additional cost but is economical at the long term as the SDI found to sustain the date palm farming system in this region where arid conditions acts as natural constraints for expansive agriculture.

Farmers' preferences for irrigation water demand management tools: a Bayesian analysis of choice behaviour of farmers in Krishna river basin, India

We ninvestigate the factors that affect total factor productivity growth in MENA ncountries. To this end, we start first by examining levels and trends in nagricultural outputs and productivity growth using Torqnovist Indexes and then ncomputing Malmquist Indexes for three MENA countries representing three ndifferent agro-ecological areas; irrigated (Egypt), rainfed (Tunisia) and nrangeland (Jordan) over the period 1961-2012. We make use of data drawn from nthe Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) dataset. The advantage of this ndecomposition is that allows decomposing TFP into its two components, namely ntechnical efficiency (TEF) and technological change (TECH). The analysis was ncomplemented by econometric regression of the obtained TECH, considered as the nmost important long-run driver of TFP growth, scores on a set of potential nexplicative variables. Turning to the ndeterminants of the components of TECH, the paper findings showed that TFP can nbe increased due to the increasing in human capital, share of the main crop nharvested in each country, and resource reallocation-agricultural employment nshare. The main implication policy of this research is that growth and ndeterminants of TFP are essential for assessing the country past and potential neconomic performance, and the gains in TFP drive gains in income and growth.

Farmers' Adaptation to Groundwater Shortage in the Dry Areas: Improving Appropriation or Enhancing Accommodation?†

The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of research, development extension (RD&E) and climate change (measured in terms of change in rainfall) on the productivity growth of agriculture in Tunisia during the period 1970–2011, using output-based Tornqvist index combined with econometric regression. Results show that RD&E and climate change are significantly affecting the long-run productivity growth of the Tunisian agriculture. Climate change lessens the productivity of agriculture in the long run whilst RD&E boosts its productivity. Empirical findings suggest that an increase in agricultural RD&E investment is critical to improving long-run productivity growth in the face of adverse climate change.

Effect of changes in the institutional structure of irrigation water property rights on the willingness to pay of farmers for water: case of Tunisia

Policy designers have various water demand management (WDM) strategies to achieve efficient water use and allocation at their disposal, such as setting the price of water, decentralizing irrigation water management or improving the quality of water rights. Interestingly, most of these strategies have been applied individually without focusing on the relations between them. This paper uses a discrete choice model to analyse the scope for and the farmer’s acceptance of combinations of irrigation WDM tools. In terms of local irrigation water governance the presence or absence of collective irrigation water management among farmers in the form of water user association (WUA) is considered. Water rights are specified by the duration of the title, by their transferability and by the quality of title. Finally, four types of water pricing methods (area, crop, quota and volumetric pricing) are selected for the experimental design. Using the choice experiment we can elicit the most preferred water pricing method under different water rights, water prices and local irrigation water governance contexts. Our results indicated that under conditions of improved water rights, preference for volumetric pricing increases, while the presence of a WUA decreases this preference. We also showed that making the right combination of WDM tools considerably increases the willingness to pay for a change in scenario.