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Abstract
Agricultural production is risky. When farmers are risk-averse, they are likely to put a premium
on production methods that reduce perceived risks. Irrigation is generally believed to be a riskreducing
input. By using the concept of stochastic dominance, risk-efficient irrigation policies for
wheat grown in central India are identified and quantitative estimates of benefits due to risk
reduction are obtained. Such benefits were found to be of a large order of magnitude. The more
common methods such as mean variance analysis tended to over-estimate the benefits.