Studying productivity of and demand for water in sugar beet production in Eqlid district

In this paper, productivity of and demand for water throughout Eqlid’s Sugar beet growers in 1385 were investigated. To address the objective 100 growers were selected using two-stage cluster sampling, then required dataset was obtained by interviewing and completing questionnaire. In order to study factors affecting Sugar beet production, Cobb-Douglas production function was applied. Based on the findings, water, poison, machinery, cropping area and credits were revealed to affect production significantly, with positive effect of water and machinery. Average and marginal productivity of water were 0.89 and 0.304, respectively. According to R2 coefficient, it was recognized that estimated production function can explain 85% of production changes. The results also showed demand elasticity of more than unit for water, indicating elastic demand relative to input price. So, using appropriate price policy can depart toward preventing irregular use of water and leading growers toward its optimal use.