In Southern Alberta, agriculture is the largest water user. Thirteen irrigation districts plus numerous private irrigators hold licenses to withdraw more than 75% of the available surface water. Water use decisions made by farmers in irrigation districts have significant impacts on the productivity of water use and on environmental outcomes (instream flow needs) throughout the South Saskatchewan River Basin (SSRB), especially during periods of drought. The objective of this paper is to investigate current and alternative water allocation strategies and their effects on crop choices with a focus on the irrigation districts in the Bow River Sub-basin of the SSRB. A mathematical programming model is developed to optimize economic returns from crop production, subject to specified restrictions imposed by water supply, institutional and hydrological conditions, production technology and land characteristics. Positive Mathematical Programming is used for model calibration with data from 2002-2003 provided by Alberta Agriculture Food and Rural Development. This research provides an explicit framework for the design and comparison of water policy options in Southern Alberta. The findings provide information to address the twin objectives of increasing the productivity of agricultural water use and meeting the environmental flow requirements of the Bow River Basin.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association) in its series 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA with number
21240.
Length: Date of creation: 2006 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea06:21240
Contact details of provider: Postal: 555 East Wells Street, Suite 1100, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202 Phone: (414) 918-3190 Fax: (414) 276-3349 Email: Web page: http://www.aaea.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (AgEcon Search).
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: