IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea25/361140.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Targeted Subsidies for Water Conservation in Smallholder Agriculture

Author

Listed:
  • Bhandari, Humnath
  • Chakravorty, Ujjayant
  • Habib, Muhammad Ashraful
  • Emerick, Kyle

Abstract

Groundwater depletion threatens long-term food security in developing countries. Moreover, groundwater pumping contributes to climate change. We evaluate the effect of targeted subsidies for technology to use groundwater more efficiently in agriculture. Using a randomized controlled trial across 360 villages in Bangladesh, we show that subsidies reduce electricity used for pumping by 38 percent, but only when targeted to water sellers. Subsidizing technology to individual farmers has smaller effects. Features of the groundwater market can explain this result. Natural monopolist water sellers charge fixed fees to farmers, but maintain a role in irrigation planning, incentivizing them to adopt conservation practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Bhandari, Humnath & Chakravorty, Ujjayant & Habib, Muhammad Ashraful & Emerick, Kyle, 2025. "Targeted Subsidies for Water Conservation in Smallholder Agriculture," 2025 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2025, Denver, CO 361140, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea25:361140
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.361140
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/361140/files/77503_77508_105300_Ag_Electricity_V3.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.361140?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    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:ags:aaea25:361140. 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.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.