Effects of Agricultural Water Resource Management on Livelihood Poverty Alleviation in Rural Areas of Iran

Poverty is the most dangerous phenomenon jeopardizing the human life. Various experiences indicate that many factors are effective in poverty generation. Irrigation water is one of the most necessary resources in household's production and livelihood activities; thus, giving attention to the role of irrigation paves the ground for achieving the expanding objectives of both economic growth and rural and agricultural development. Therefore, irrigation water is directly and indirectly related to the poverty reduction. This study aims at the identification of factors affecting the livelihood poverty of producers in agricultural sector as well as impacts of agricultural water resource management on poverty alleviation. For these purposes, it makes use of descriptive and inferential statistics and selects 350 producers of irrigated farms from six different regions as the statistical samples. During the explanation of livelihood poverty component through structural equation modeling technique, it is found that the producer's holding and capital (share of agricultural water and amount of irrigated land) with 0.53 have the highest direct and overall impact on the explanation of the structural model.