IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ajarec/v61y2017i3p404-421.html

The impact of drought and water scarcity on irrigator farm exit intentions in the Murray–Darling Basin

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah Ann Wheeler
  • Alec Zuo

Abstract

Drought and future water scarcity in the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) will continue to restructure the irrigation industry in the coming decades. There has been little work conducted in Australia that has modelled farm exit or exit intention. ABARES farm survey data were used to model irrigators’ farm exit intentions across the southern MDB from 2006 to 2013. In particular, we examined the hypotheses that drought and water scarcity positively impacted on farm exit intentions and that it is the poorest performing farms that intend to exit in times of drought. Results revealed that water scarcity impacts varied considerably. There was only weak evidence to suggest that irrigators’ exit intentions were higher in times of drought, but there was stronger evidence to support the influence of a lagged water scarcity impact on farm exit intentions during periods of nondrought (e.g. intending to exit at times when the property market was less depressed). There was also strong evidence that poorer performing farms (measured by rates of return and higher debt over a certain level) were more likely to have exit intentions in drought periods, but not necessarily so in nondrought periods. Older age is the most consistent predictor of farm exit intentions across all industries, though it was most significant in drought periods.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Ann Wheeler & Alec Zuo, 2017. "The impact of drought and water scarcity on irrigator farm exit intentions in the Murray–Darling Basin," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 61(3), pages 404-421, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ajarec:v:61:y:2017:i:3:p:404-421
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1467-8489.12218
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wheeler, Sarah Ann, 2022. "Debunking Murray-Darling Basin water trade myths," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 66(04), January.
    2. Daghagh Yazd, Sahar & Wheeler, Sarah Ann & Zuo, Alec, 2020. "Understanding the impacts of water scarcity and socio-economic demographics on farmer mental health in the Murray-Darling Basin," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    3. David A. Fleming‐Muñoz & Stuart Whitten & Graham D. Bonnett, 2023. "The economics of drought: A review of impacts and costs," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 67(4), pages 501-523, October.
    4. Provost, Jennifer & Rosero, Gabriel & Brümmer, Bernhard & Schlecht, Eva, 2022. "To sell, not to sell, or to quit: Exploring milk producers’ approaches after a supply chain disruption in Northwest Cameroon," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    5. Sarah Ann Wheeler & Alec Zuo & John Kandulu, 2021. "What Water are We Really Pumping? The Nature and Extent of Surface and Groundwater Substitutability in Australia and Implications for Water Management Policies," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(4), pages 1550-1570, December.
    6. Guy M. Robinson & Bingjie Song, 2023. "Managing Water for Environmental Provision and Horticultural Production in South Australia’s Riverland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(15), pages 1-20, July.
    7. Zuo, Alec & Wheeler, Sarah Ann & Xu, Ying, 2022. "Expanders, diversifiers or downsizers? Identifying clusters of irrigators’ water trade and farm management strategies in Australia," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 264(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ajarec:v:61:y:2017:i:3:p:404-421. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaresea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.