TY - JOUR
T1 - A parsimonious crop-water productivity index
T2 - An application to Brazil
AU - Maneta, Marco P.
AU - Singh, Purnendu N.
AU - Torres, Marcelo
AU - Wallender, Wesley W.
AU - Vosti, Stephen A.
AU - Rodrigues, Lineu N.
AU - Bassoi, Luis H.
AU - Young, Julie A.
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - Reducing poverty in rural areas of developing countries requires sustained and sustainable increases in agricultural water productivity. However, aside from traditional measures of precipitation, little is known about water available to farmers or how productively they use it. We present a crop-water productivity index (a ratio of the value of annual crop production to a dimensionless potential water availability index) for large water basins using readily available low-resolution data. The index is transferable, permits direct inter-basin comparisons, and is simple to calculate. We calculate the index for each municipality in the São Francisco river basin in Brazil. No clear patterns linking water availability and value of agricultural output are evident, even though clusters of municípios with high- and low-crop-water productivity emerge, and the former may be useful in guiding policies aimed at increasing water productivity. Finally, analyses of the effects of information uncertainty on the crop-water productivity index suggest that the returns to agricultural investments in certain places in the São Francisco river basin are more risky than others. Improvements in data quality and quantity can help refine estimates of the index and reduce their uncertainty.
AB - Reducing poverty in rural areas of developing countries requires sustained and sustainable increases in agricultural water productivity. However, aside from traditional measures of precipitation, little is known about water available to farmers or how productively they use it. We present a crop-water productivity index (a ratio of the value of annual crop production to a dimensionless potential water availability index) for large water basins using readily available low-resolution data. The index is transferable, permits direct inter-basin comparisons, and is simple to calculate. We calculate the index for each municipality in the São Francisco river basin in Brazil. No clear patterns linking water availability and value of agricultural output are evident, even though clusters of municípios with high- and low-crop-water productivity emerge, and the former may be useful in guiding policies aimed at increasing water productivity. Finally, analyses of the effects of information uncertainty on the crop-water productivity index suggest that the returns to agricultural investments in certain places in the São Francisco river basin are more risky than others. Improvements in data quality and quantity can help refine estimates of the index and reduce their uncertainty.
KW - Agricultural productivity
KW - Crop-water productivity index
KW - Irrigation
KW - Uncertainty propagation
KW - Water availability index
KW - Water productivity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=58949103825&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2008.00845.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2008.00845.x
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:58949103825
SN - 0004-0894
VL - 41
SP - 94
EP - 106
JO - Area
JF - Area
IS - 1
ER -