Water Productivity of Wheat Production: A Case Study of Abarkooh, Yazd, Iran

In arid and semiarid regions of the world, the major concern of the agricultural sector is to produce more food using less water, i.e., increase water productivity. This study examined the productivity and water demand function for wheat farmers in Abarkooh during the agricultural season of 2007-2008. Abarkooh is the biggest wheat producing region of Yazd province. Data on water, pesticide and fertilizer use, seeds, area under cultivation and labor was gathered by questionnaire in 2007- 2008 year. There was considerable increasing in wheat production in this time step. Therefor this agricultural year was selected for this study. The data was analyzed using Eviews and the Cobb Douglasproduction function. Results showed that the average productivity at the middle and final consumption measurements for water were 0.82 and 0.33, respectively. R2 results showed that the function can determine changes in production. The flexible price of water demand was less than 1. This means that the demand function lacks flexibility therefore irrigation water use will not decrease for wheat as the price of water increases.