Infrastructure investment and policy management of water resources for small-scale irrigated agriculture

We investigate the options for enhancing the welfare of small farmers in Thailand through subsidies of irrigation infrastructure. Enhanced water storage and irrigation can significantly improve yield and the welfare of the farm community by providing a more reliable water supply during growing periods. Generally speaking, such enhancements require subsidies from the government or other organizations since farmers are not able or willing to finance infrastructure development themselves. In order to maximize the effectiveness of such subsidies it is important to understand how farmers will react to alternative policies. We develop a two-tier approach to this problem. First, we use a government-level optimization model to identify the set of subsidies and water pricing policies that maximizes a stated measure of aggregate social welfare. This government-level model relies on a farm-level model that determines how individual small farmers will react to the policy alternatives. The farm-level model combines hydrologic, economic, and agronomic features since it considers how hydrologic variability affects crop yield, which in turn affects the farmer's utility. Policy decision variables considered in the government subsidy/pricing model include 1) water price and the number of farms served by public storage facilities (i. e. a water supply reservoir and enhanced in-stream storage), 2) maximum sizes of on-farm ponds paid for by the government, and 3) amounts of direct cash subsidies paid to the farmer. The objective is to maximize the aggregate welfare of all farmers served subject to a limit on the total subsidy as well as constraints designed to limit inequities and urban migration. The problem is solved with a deterministic nonlinear programming algorithm.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Author dc:creator

• Amornvivat, Sutapa, 1974-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Dennis B. McLaughlin.

• Technology, Management, and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29545

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/29545