Premium
OUTPUT AND INVESTMENT FRONTIERS OF UNITED STATES IRRIGATED AGRICULTURE 1
Author(s) -
Long Roger B.
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
jawra journal of the american water resources association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.957
H-Index - 105
eISSN - 1752-1688
pISSN - 1093-474X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1752-1688.1985.tb05370.x
Subject(s) - agriculture , irrigation , investment (military) , agricultural economics , irrigated agriculture , constraint (computer aided design) , economics , value (mathematics) , dryland farming , marginal value , environmental science , water resource management , natural resource economics , geography , mathematics , agronomy , political science , statistics , geometry , archaeology , politics , law , biology , microeconomics
Economic models sometimes indicate that irrigation water is misallocated in agriculture, especially when it appears that the marginal value product is higher in other uses (such as for hydro‐power). Historically, trends tend to contradict this reasoning, however, especially since irrigation has grown from 20 million acres in 1940 to over 50 million acres in 1980. Results of this study tend to indicate that as agriculture becomes more and more intensive (in terms of inputs), irrigation is part of that long term trend. Further, major economic variables, such as output and investments in agriculture, appear to be more highly correlated with irrigated land than with dryland agriculture. Recent data indicate an upper limit of about 320 million acres for dryland farming in the United States, while no such constraint is apparent for irrigated agriculture.