The Impact of Groundwater Exploitation on the Farmers' Income of the Desert and Non-Desert Regions of Iran.

Water is one of the most valuable natural resources and one of the main inputs for agricultural products manufacturing. Due to high dependence on regional condition, agriculture is the largest consumer of water resources in many countries. Hence, today, agricultural water management plays an important role in the use of water resources of these countries. In dry and semi-arid areas like most arts of Iran, because of lack of surface water, groundwater resources are used. This research investigates and compares the effects of the decrease in the surface of the groundwater on farmers' income in rural areas of Iran, desert areas and non-desert areas during 1389 to 1393. For this purpose, agricultural production function (The Cobb-Douglass production function) were estimated by using Ordinary Least Squares method and Eviews software. The results showed that since agriculture in arid and desert areas of Iran due to shortage of the rainfall and low surface water resources requires more usage of groundwater resources؛  so the effect of groundwater limitation on production and income in the desert areas of Iran is much more than its non-desert areas, and reducing those resources over time will reduce farmers' income more in these areas.