Productivity And Performance Of Irrigated Wheat Farms Across Canal Commands In The Lower Indus Basin

A study of the enormous differences in agricultural productivity that exist across farms and regions in Pakistan, where, for example, recent farm-level data from Sindh, indicates that irrigated wheat output per hectare varies from 0.5 to 5.4 tons across farms. Looks at the central goal of agricultural policy in the country, viz. improving and sustaining productivity, narrowing the existing productivity gaps, and enhancing resource use efficiencies to meet food requirements of a rapidly growing population.

In this paper, we estimate the allocative inefficiency of groundwater in Pakistani agriculture and compare it across a set of farm-level constraints, using a panel dataset of rural households. The farm-level constraints include tenure, farm size, access to surface water and location on a watercourse. We use a stochastic approach, based on a system of equations to estimate both the technical efficiency of farms and the allocative efficiency of groundwater use. The allocation of surface irrigation water in Pakistan is fixed per unit of land, so its allocative inefficiency cannot be estimate. Therefore, we will treat surface water as a fixed factor and focus mainly on groundwater. The analysis sheds light on the utilization of irrigation water across a set of farm-specific characteristics. It also provides a basis for a psssible redesign of water policy. The results in this paper constitute the empirical basis for policy work that we will focus on in our future work.

Enduring low agricultural productivity is one of the major causes of rural poverty in South Asia. Based on a review of recent empirical studies, this paper focuses on three key questions: (1) why is agricultural productivity low in the region?; (2) what are the key constraints and opportunities for enhancing agricultural productivity; and (3) what are the effective mechanisms to improve access to key productivity enhancing technologies, factors and services. Two major points raised in the paper are: (a) improved management of land and water is important for increasing productivity, but equally important is farmer access to non land and water-related inputs and services, which through their complementary relationships with water, increase the productivity and value of water. Even if most of the constraints related to land and water are removed through improved management, the resulting gains in productivity may not be sufficient-in the presence of constraints related to other factors and services-to have any significant impacts on poverty. Therefore, in order to generate any major increases in productivity, improved access for farmers to non land and water-related factors and services is also important; (b) access to these factors and services can be improved by providing them in an integrated manner with public-private sector partnerships. Based on examples of various models, initiatives and practices from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, China, Sub-Saharan Africa and other countries, the study suggests a framework for integrated services provision in the agriculture sector, and raises key research issues and questions to be explored.

Discusses and illustrates concepts for identifying ways of improving productivity of water within basins. The results of applying a water accounting procedure to four sub-basins in South Asia (Bhakra in India; Chishtian in Pakistan; Huruluwewa in nothern Sri Lanka; and Kirindi Oya in southern Sri Lanka) are presented. The methodology used identifies the quantities and productivity of various uses of water within a basin. This information is then used to identify the water-saving potential, and the means of improving the productivity of the managed supplies.

A clear understanding of the current water balance is required to explore options for water saving measures. However, measurement of all the terms in the water balance is infeasible in terms of spatial and temporal scale, but hydrological simulation models can fill the gap between measured and required data. For a basin in Western Turkey, simulation modeling at three different scales, field, irrigation scheme and basin scale, was performed to obtain all terms of the water balance. These water balance numbers were used to calculate the Productivity of Water at the three spatial levels distinguished to assess the performance of the systems.

Better water management in irrigation tank cascade systems is vital in achieving higher productive use of available water. To develop and implement management practices aimed at improving effective use of water, studies leading to the development of models that can predict available tank water in irrigation tank cascade systems are invaluable. This report presents a simple water balance model, Cascade, developed to predict tank water availability in the Thirappane tank cascade system in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. The report includes calibration of the model and its application to predict tank water availability for rice crops over a 10-year period.

Thousands of small irrigation reservoirs (tanks) exist in rice ecosystems in malarious regions of south Asia. The potential of these tanks to generate malaria-transmitting mosquitoes has not been adequately evaluated. Through a study of nine small irrigation tanks in north-central Sri Lanka, this report provides an assessment of the capacity of tanks to generate malaria and nuisance mosquitoes, factors that contribute to mosquito generation, and measures that could ameliorate the problem.