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Details
Title
Improving Irrigated Agriculture: How Far Can We Go?
Author(s)
Meyer, Wayne S.
Issue Date
Aug 16 2006
Publication Type
Conference Paper/ Presentation
DOI and Other Identifiers
10.22004/ag.econ.124468
Record Identifier
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/124468
PURL Identifier
http://purl.umn.edu/124468
Language
English
Total Pages
9
Note
The last decade has seen the nexus between increasing
world population and the area of irrigated
land broken, indicating that further population will
need to be fed by improved water productivity
rather than through increased irrigated area. But
how much improvement is possible?
This paper systematically considers irrigated agriculture
from the plant through to a catchment, and
from production and natural resource use perspectives.
While there is some evidence of improvement in
transpiration productivity (yield per unit of transpired
water) of our common irrigated crops, it
seems we have reached the limit of potential improvement.
Opportunity still exists to increase economic
yield while containing seasonal water use
through manipulation of vegetative and reproductive
growth phases. For crops, the opportunity for
improving water productivity largely involves decreasing
soil surface evaporation relative to crop
transpiration. There are still gains to be made in
this area from both improved irrigation system design
and agronomic practice. Farm layout, distribution
and application systems can be significantly
improved to increase water use efficiency. However,
given the relative costs of water, earthworks,
labour and equipment, there is often little financial
incentive to reduce total water use for marginal
gains in yield. Audits of many distribution systems
show considerable opportunity for improvement
and also highlight the inadequacy of current measurement
systems. There is generally good opportunity
to decrease water losses in these distribution
systems but a significant limitation is securing the
immediate and ongoing financial resources
needed to upgrade.
Given the demand for water and the constraints on
availability, we need improvement in financial and
ecological productivity. Our purpose is therefore to
seek increased multi-purpose water use productivity.
There is good evidence that this can be
achieved through irrigated regional engagement
and a much greater emphasis on irrigation within a
business context.