Efficient water management: an analysis for the agricultural sector

Efficient water use in agriculture depends on a number of variables, from the farmers’ perceptions of these concerns, to the socioeconomic dimensions. In any case, it is important to bring about more insight into these fields, specifically to stimulate the design of adjusted management plans and policies which increase water efficiency on farms. These are relevant motivations to perform more research in these fields. In this framework, the main objective of this study is to analyse the water management efficiency of the agricultural sector in the regions (NUTS 2) and countries in the European Union. For this purpose, statistical information from the Eurostat was considered and an approach based on the Cobb–Douglas theory of production was used which combines DEA (data envelopment analysis) with factor and cluster analysis. Also performed was qualitative analysis with the Atlas.ti software. This approach that combines qualitative analysis with DEA–factor-cluster analysis brings new outcomes to the literature. The insights obtained from this study reveal that it is possible to improve water management without compromising the agricultural output and while still improving farmers’ profit. For example, in some French regions, almost 100% of the surface water withdrawal for agricultural irrigation could be saved.