Water Quantity Management in a Heterogeneous Landscape with Farsighted Farmers
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Water Quantity Management in a Heterogeneous Landscape with Farsighted Farmers Anne-Sarah Chiambretto1 · Elsa Martin2 Accepted: 27 August 2020 / Published online: 24 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Agricultural production contributes to many environmental problems. In semi-arid areas, agricultural irrigation causes the so-called waterlogging phenomenon. This phenomenon is both spatial and dynamic since percolation depends on soil quality summed up in landscape heterogeneity and evolves along time. Furthermore, farmers can be farsighted with respect to their contribution to percolation. We study regulation schemes to be implemented to restore the socially optimal spatial and temporal production plan of farmers in such a context. We show that both a temporal tax on percolation and a spatio-temporal tax on inputs (both at the extensive and at the intensive margin) are efficient for the restoration of the socially optimal solution. Furthermore, a numerical example demonstrates that the consequences of implementing a fiscal scheme designed for myopic farmers whereas they are farsighted depends on the distribution of soil quality. Keywords Irrigation · Landscape · Spatio-temporal optimization · Differential game JEL Classification Q24 · Q25 · C72
1 Introduction The economics and management of water and drainage in agriculture is an important topic initiated well ago to which Dinar and Zilberman (1991) dedicated a book. More specifically, in arid and semiarid areas, the problem of waterlogging arises in impermeable or poorly drained soils. Umali (1993) describes the extent of the problem at the international level and shows that developing countries are the more at risk. The consequences of the waterlogging phenomena, known as the “twin menace” of irrigated agriculture, is a decrease in food production, with the food insecurity that this involves. Singh (2015) shows that this is still
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Elsa Martin [email protected] Anne-Sarah Chiambretto [email protected]
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CEEM, INRAE, SupAgro Montpellier, Univ. Montpellier, Montpellier, France
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CESAER, AgroSup Dijon, INRAE, Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comté, 21000 Dijon, France
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A.-S. Chiambretto, E. Martin
a serious and persistent problem in agriculture in many parts of the world with more than one third of the world’s irrigated land affected. Furthermore, Jiang et al. (2008) stress that the problem of waterlogging is expected to exacerbate with climate change. To sum up the environmental mechanism behind waterlogging, the soaking of soils above the underlying aquifer causes plant asphyxia in the short run and worsen the process of salinization in the long run, this latter one being defined as the increasing concentration of dissolved salts in soils and waters that renders soils unable to produce food anymore. In some areas, it is the excess of irrigation that leads to the rise of the water table up to the crop-root, inducing a reduction of crop yields. This excess of irrigation is due to the fact that irrigation water and the saturated zone ar
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