Irrigation efficiency for who?
I live halfway between Phoenix and Tucson. Pretty much what you would call desert if you were new to the area like I am. Water is an issue as much of it comes from the Colorado river. The limits to draw water from the Colorado are still being determined or in a flux. The states are jockeying for more to insure growth. Nothing is stopping our small city from issuing more building permits.
Irrigation efficiency for who? – The one-handed economist, David Zetland.
I recently met Bruce Lankford, an experienced irrigation expert, at a small conference in London. He was annoyed that policy makers misunderstand the basic facts of irrigation, and especially in how they encourage “efficient” practices that may not be. They assume, for example, that drip irrigation is “modern and efficient” whereas flood row irrigation is “traditional and inefficient.”
He sent me his 2012 paper: “Fictions, fractions, factorials and fractures; on the framing of irrigation efficiency” [pdf].
While reading it, I realized that the debate he’s engaging is not “policy relevant” to economists like me (totally in line with his brilliant Table 1).
Let’s break this down:
Irrigation specialists, managers and the farmers who use irrigation systems really need to pay attention to how much water goes where.
- Managers need to make sure the system delivers water fairly (with respect to rights) and evenly (with respect to operational performance).
- Specialists care because they want to have consistent measures of performance, which are needed if one seeks to improve performance or redesign systems.
- Farmers care about efficiency to the extent that it allows them to get “more crop per drop.”
None of these concerns need be relevant to policy-makers and economists, but they often are.
efficiency for who?
I recently met Bruce Lankford, an experienced irrigation expert, at a small conference in London. He was annoyed that policy makers misunderstand the basic facts of irrigation, and especially in how they encourage “efficient” practices that may not be. They assume, for example, that drip irrigation is “modern and efficient” whereas flood row irrigation is “traditional and inefficient.”
He sent me his 2012 paper: “Fictions, fractions, factorials and fractures; on the framing of irrigation efficiency” [pdf].
While reading it, I realized that the debate he’s engaging is not “policy relevant” to economists like me (totally in line with his brilliant Table 1).
Let’s break this down:
Irrigation specialists, managers and the farmers who use irrigation systems really need to pay attention to how much water goes where.
- Managers need to make sure the system delivers water fairly (with respect to rights) and evenly (with respect to operational performance).
- Specialists care because they want to have consistent measures of performance, which are needed if one seeks to improve performance or redesign systems.
- Farmers care about efficiency to the extent that it allows them to get “more crop per drop.”
None of these concerns need be relevant to policy-makers and economists, but they often are.
Why?
Policy makers/politicians love free-lunches, and “efficiency improvements” allow them to give more water from the same volume. With water scarcity and food demand rising, who would not want to grow more food with the same quantity of water? But that goal is vulnerable to accounting errors and tricks, which often means that “win win” systems (on paper) are “win lose” or “lose lose” in reality.
What’s going wrong? Hayek would say that information is too diffuse and unstructured to be aggregated and (effectively) used by centralized decision-makers. And I would agree, which is why I have — for years — favored the simple, but crude policy of allocating irrigation rights with the assumption of 0% efficiency, i.e., 100% consumption of the water.*
This assumption means that “saved” water is a gain to the farmer with rights, another farmer, or the environment. It also means that “efficiency gains” do not come at the expense to non-irrigators.
For example:
- Ten farmers each have rights to 5 units of water in a watershed with 100 units of water.
- If efficiency is 0%, then all 50 units are used, and 50 units are left for the environment.
- If efficiency is 60%, then each farmer “uses” 3 units and 2 units are “lost.” Overall consumption of 30 units leaves 70 units for the environment.
A win for ecosystems? Typically no, since a policy maker would say “Wait! We can allocate those 20 units of saved water to 7 farmers (rounding from 6.67), with the assumption that they also use 3 and lose 2, so now farmers are using 50 (it’s really 51), and 50 still goes to the environment! Win win!”
But now say that farmers get “more efficient,” and reduce losses from 2 to 1 unit per farmer. Now 17 farmers use 68 units. If they reduce “waste” to zero, then they use 85 units! The environment suffers, even though rights are exactly the same.
This process is not just made up — it’s the default, since policy makers like pleasing farmers, and the environment is a terrible lobbyist.
That’s why I support 100% consumption/0% efficiency when allocating rights.* In that case 50 units are allocated and “used” on paper, while the environment gets 50 units on paper. If the farmers “waste” 2 units each, then 20 units ALSO go to the environment, so my conservative accounting provides better protection to the flows that sustain ecosystems — and us.
Farms, as businesses, are profiting from their private use of water that is, fundamentally, a resource owned by citizens. That means that they should not operate if that damages ecosystems (qua public goods). Although that is often the case, it should not continue in a climate changing world, due to the rising value of the ecosystems we still have.
Oh, and my “one unit, all consumed” (OUAC!) preference also helps with water markets and trading. If rights are somehow defined in terms of (non-zero) efficiency, then trading or transferring rights is difficult without complex re-balancing to reflect the efficiency of the buyer. With OUAC, those changes are interesting to farmers, but policy people can ignore them.**
And let me be clear: efficiency, losses, flows and other measures of what water goes where is totally important and useful to farmers and irrigation managers. They need to open and close gates; they need to maintain head flows; and they need to make sure crops get the right volume at the right time, but all of those details — pace Hayek — need not be aggregated to policy makers or into water rights.
My one-handed conclusion is that water rights should be simple to understand and compatible with other water uses, without creating risks and crises if and when practices, technologies or use-location changes.
The problem is being gradually resolved in China by the Internet of things and 5G. Sensors are used through fields and resource inputs called for and made according to sensor readings. China has been spending over $100 billion yearly on water conservancy infrastructure. About $150 billion will be spent in 2023. The efforts are continually being formally written about.
Hi ltr — sensing technology is not useful for reducing over-use of water.
David Zetland:
Chinese water conservancy experts consider efficient irrigation important and work is being done on irrigation systems and plantings that make increasingly better use of irrigation:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202211/05/WS6365fec3a3105ca1f22743ad.html
November 5, 2022
Experts highlight urgency of efficient irrigation
By LI LEI
Agricultural officials and scientists highlighted the urgency of developing more efficient irrigation methods at a forum on Saturday as China races to vitalize rural areas and modernize its agriculture.
The demand for more efficient watering techniques is on the rise as the country works to build high-standard farmland for large-scale mechanical farming and to construct demonstration zones for modernized agriculture, said Zhou Guomin, director of the Institute of Farmland Irrigation of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
The State Council, China’s cabinet, unveiled a plan last year to increase the area of high-standard farmland to 71.67 million hectares by 2025 and 80 million hectares by 2030.
“The need for intelligent water conservancy and irrigation systems is ever more urgent,” he said at the opening ceremony of The First National Smart Irrigation Forum, which opened Saturday in Xinxiang, Henan province.
The theme for the two-day event was “to focus on smart irrigation for rural vitalization”….
Hi ltr — sensing technology is not useful for reducing over-use of water.
Thank you, David, but both the Israelis and Chinese claim this is incorrect. Look to Spain and the need for advanced irrigation technology should be clearer.
I appreciate the comment.
Sci-tech innovation turns desert sands into arable land
CHONGQING — Were it not for the wind-blown grains of sand stinging his body, Wang Zhixiang might easily forget that he is farming in the Taklimakan Desert, the largest desert in China and one of the driest regions in the world.
The harsh conditions in the Taklimakan, which is deep within Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, make farming in the desert impractical, so locals have traditionally relied on food supplies from other provinces.
However, Wang and his colleagues from Chongqing Jiaotong University want to reverse this situation. Using an innovative technique called “desert soilization”, they have turned barren desert sands into productive, farmable land at an affordable cost.
They have patented a process to mix a paste made of plant cellulose with sand and apply it to the desert surface, giving it the same properties as soil — with the same capacity to sustain water, air and fertilizer.
The paste was developed in 2013 by Professor Yi Zhijian and his team after years of research. Yi is a scientist specializing in the mechanics of particulate matter at the university in Chongqing, which is a mountainous city with extensive forest coverage, very different from the desert landscape.
“Every time I thought about this discovery that can convert sand into soil, I became too excited to sleep,” the 59-year-old said, recalling the period when the invention was first made public….
Spain’s wastewater crops thrive
Been using some form of sensing technology since we figured out if we hang around the farm long enough to keep the birds away we can brew beer. Works pretty good in the cornfields of Kansas
https://english.news.cn/20221002/30a8fbee7db94256a79bf55c41671e98/c.html
October 2, 2022
Water-saving rice helps farmers secure bumper harvest amid drought
HEFEI — Though having been undergoing prolonged heat and drought since this summer, Chen Lei’s rice field in Changfeng County, east China’s Anhui Province, is still expected to reap a bumper harvest at the end of October.
Unlike common rice grown in paddy fields, the water-saving and drought-resistant rice varieties grown by Chen were sowed on dry land, while their output is about the same as common rice.
Around 20 km away in Hefei City, capital of Anhui, a seminar held in late September gathered experts countrywide to discuss these new rice varieties.
“Agricultural water consumption accounts for over 70 percent of the total water consumption in China, and rice irrigation accounts for over 70 percent of the agricultural water consumption,” said Luo Lijun, chief scientist of the Shanghai Agrobiological Gene Center.
After years of research, Luo and his team combined the good qualities of traditional rice with the drought resistance of upland rice to cultivate the new varieties, which can save about 50 percent of water and 30 percent of fertilizer usage….
Out here in the Owens Valley, overwatering has been considered an easy way to recharge the groundwater some tiny fraction of what is pumped out. Everyone uses their full allotment and wishes it were bigger. This year it is hard to tell if a pasture is being flood irrigated, just flooded, or being used deliberately for groundwater recharge. The cash hay crops are still irrigated by rain birds, and they are running multiple rows on more cultivated fields than I have seen in the last decade or more. They do have losses to evaporation, but I have only seen one field irrigated by a more efficient sprinkler system, running sprayers just inches above the crop.
Out here in the Owens Valley, overwatering has been considered an easy way to recharge the groundwater some tiny fraction of what is pumped out….
[ This is fascinating. Please do continue. Is the Valley groundwater essentially inexhaustible? I do know the lake in the Valley is mostly dry now… Is there any reason for Valley farmers to conserve? ]
Inexhaustible? Far from it. “Water and Power” by Kahrl is a good account of the history.
Land is owned by DWP, they have been sending water to LA for almost a century. Dried up the Owens lake decades ago. Have been trying to do the same thing to Mono lake, but the courts stepped in sometime last century.
Flood irrigation percolates down, and the plant roots take up whatever water they can use. The rest keeps going until it joins the water table. Sprinkler irrigation has lots of water losses to evaporation, the air is normally quite dry although the last few years the humidity has gone up. Even so, if you put enough water on the crops some of it may finally join the water table. There are big pumps that pull water out of the water table and put in directly into the aqueduct. Look to be 12 inch pipes.
The allocations for the various users is determined each year, the mechanism is probably court ordered. Among other things, water table height is one of the variables. During the drought, it dropped tremendously. The Bishop Cone has preferential rights to water in the cone area for use by the residents of the area. Our neighbors two streets over had to re-drill their well from 30 feet to over 200 feet, their original well was over 30 years old, so that might be the 30 year drop.
We have meetings every year, and it seems like we get new court cases almost as often. This is the first year since I have been here that there were no complaints about not getting enough of an allocation of water by anyone. Now it is flood mitigation and repairs.
Owens lake is a lake again because of the snow melt. At least 8-10 miles of lake bottom are covered with water, how deep I don’t know, but a lot of the dust mitigation infrastructure that DWP has been forced to put in for the last 20 years is underwater and probably damaged. And the fields now are sometimes flooded, not just flood irrigated. The valley now is a desert normally, but it used to be described as swampy. Parts of it are looking swampy now. For years you could barely see, or not see, the reservoirs and river from 395. Now you can see both, for miles.
Back in the early 20th century they blew up the aqueduct, this year the floods took out part of it. Gravity flow all the way to LA San Fernando valley. Bought the farm and orchard and ranch lands in the valley to take the water to the other valley and farm with it, now it is all homes but they still need the water. What was done then would not be legal now, the laws of the state were changed.
Now they are talking about spreading water to do ground recharge because we have so much excess. Now the problem is that the ranchers would rather have it done closer to where they could get the benefit of it. The water in Owens lake may reach the water table if it doesn’t just evaporate, but it is so contaminated with the salts and whatever else that it is unusable, and there are no wells there to get at it anyway because the water under the lake is bad. Ranchers want the water recharged closer to the wells they get their water from.
Water is definitely for fighting over here. Still. I don’t know if we still have any court cases pending or not. The courts tend to tell the various parties to suck it up and try to settle it among themselves several times before they finally make an order. They know that whatever the court orders today will need to be re-litigated or modified in a decade or two and it just gums up the courts. The DWP would love to limit use in the Bishop cone, because drought among other things, but that is court ordered and still stands. And of course there are some people here who will be profligate with water because they can, while those on a limit just fume. More fights to come, I am sure.
Jane,
A perfect essay for me. I will save and use the essay for reference, and follow the water issues closely.
China, by the way, is working especially on producing a variety of crops that grow well in saline-alkali soil. There is a vast amount of such soil about the world, and learning to use it for wheat and corn and rice (sea-rice) and alfalfa… is essential. China is growing sea-alfalfa now that actually gradually improves the soil planting to planting.
You are terrific.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-06-19/Chinese-scientists-identify-genes-for-more-heat-tolerant-rice-1aZ3EPUr1de/index.html
June 19, 2022
Chinese scientists identify genes for more heat-tolerant rice
Chinese scientists have found two genes in rice that can make the staple crop more heat-resistant, providing a new way to breed highly thermotolerant crops, according to a study * published in the journal Science.
The researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shanghai Jiao Tong University revealed the mechanism by which the rice’s cell membrane senses external heat-stress signals before communicating with chloroplasts – the organelles in which photosynthesis occurs.
Too much heat can damage a plant’s chloroplasts. When temperatures exceed a crop’s usual tolerance, its yields tend to drop.
The researchers identified a locus with two genes: Thermo-tolerance 3.1 (TT3.1) and Thermo-tolerance 3.2 (TT3.2). They interact in concert to enhance rice thermotolerance and reduce grain-yield losses caused by heat stress.
The researchers found that accumulated TT3.2 triggers chloroplast damage regarding heat stress, but, in that scenario, TT3.1 can serve as a remedy.
Upon heat stress, TT3.1, a potential thermosensor, will remove the cell membrane from the cell to degrade the mature TT3.2 proteins, according to the study….
* https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.abo5721?download=true
Too complicated for me to understand in a few minutes. For one thing the farmer’s crop is also a “public good,” even if the production and marketing of it is entirely controlled by private enterprise. for another, it is not always clear thatn “the environment” has a voice in the decisions, whatever the deciders say. Nor am i so .sure that “desert” is waste land.
Problem is that “science” does not always know as much as it thinks it does, and “deciders” almost always make political choices, parcelling out “wins” to the various political factions without much regard to actually solving the real problem.
I suspect the Chinese [that is I do not know, and I have no animus toward the Chinese: they are doing what we would do in the same situation] are trying use water “efficiently” to grow the most food and supply the most industry without destroying the environment enough to limit future supplies of water to grow the most food and supply the most industry. I don’t think they will succeed in finding that magic line: too hard to know where it is, and too tempting to say “one more little drink won’t hurt.”
“I suspect the Chinese…are trying use water “efficiently” to grow the most food and supply the most industry without destroying the environment enough to limit future supplies of water to grow the most food and supply the most industry….”
That is just what the Chinese are doing and successfully enough that reforesting and adding to grassland and planting parks is going on through the country. Wuhan alone now has 7 waterparks of UN recognition:
https://english.news.cn/20221110/ace18f6904d94e59b1559ea509b8bd0b/c.html
November 10, 2022
Chinese megacities emerging as wetland paradises
By Yue Wenwan and Yao Yuan
https://english.news.cn/20221107/d79bf0b9f13841308a0e3c3696356cc9/c.html
November 7, 2022
China progressing in wetlands conservation for high-quality development
* China unveiled new ambitions for wetlands conservation during the 14th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (COP14), including incorporating 11 million hectares of wetlands in the national park system.
* For many Chinese, wetland is a new concept, but it gets an increasing spotlight as the country is advancing the progress of “ecological civilization.” Many Chinese cities have learned to integrate wetland protection into their economic and social development.
* Experts say China’s progress in wetland conservation against the backdrop of rapid economic expansion and urbanization is a source of inspiration for the rest of the world, especially other developing countries.
By Yao Yuan, Yu Pei, Yue Wenwan, Wan Pengqi and Tian Zhongquan
WUHAN/GENEVA — On a mid-lake island in central China’s metropolis of Wuhan, over 100 cormorants crowded on 10 fir trees. In a month, they will give a snow-white look to the isle even on a sunny, snowless day.
What it means to be spending more than $100 billion yearly on water conservancy projects:
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202306/02/WS6479de74a3107584c3ac3a25.html
June 2, 2023
China completes Grand Canal water supply project
BEIJING — A three-month water-replenishment project that aims to supply water to the Grand Canal, a vast waterway connecting the northern and southern parts of China, has been successfully completed, the Ministry of Water Resources said Friday.
A total of 926 million cubic meters of water was injected into the canal between March and May, the ministry said in a statement.
The canal now has water flowing through it for the second time within roughly a century. All of its dried-out sections were refilled with water in 2022 for the first time in almost 100 years, thanks to a water-supply project.
The project helps ease groundwater overexploitation in northern China, improve the ecosystems along the canal, and promote the culture of the canal, the ministry said.
What I learned from this post strikes me as quite important. I learned that water conservancy entails many varied infrastructure development approaches and much investment, from development of water conserving plant varieties to canal building over hundred of kilometers… I have dozens of articles describing efforts in China, and the efforts are meticulous and varied.
This is a splendid post, since the subject is critically important.
suspect that canals may or may not help. depends on how it gets. now if we could dump water in aquifers it might work a lot better. less evaporation
well i am sort of new to Arizona too, (in Vail).
as i understand it, about 40% of water for Arizona comes from the Colorado River. now i understand that some of the states that get water from the Colorado River have redone the amount they can use. and while about %60 of the water being used is for agriculture, and industry, %40 is from residents. and in Arizona we have some high water use crops (Alfalfa, and a few others) that need a lot of water to grow, and some the crops grown are for export only (in fact its a foreign company that is doing that). and I saw that in Phoenix they have stopped new residential development, since builders can’t guarantee that there will be enough water for 100 years. though there was a small city on the out skirts of Scottsdale that their water turned off (they got water from Scottsdale, but the city turned it of. but the state over ruled that. when water will start flowing as it has in the past is anybody’s guess
https://english.news.cn/20221212/05cd2cd85b884fa4a85a5d750514ba14/c.html
December 12, 2022
Saline agriculture helps boost farmers’ income in coastal county
JINAN — It has been a prosperous year for the largest grass farm, spanning nearly 6,000 mu (400 hectares), in Liupu Township of east China’s Shandong Province.
One mu of alfalfa grass could yield one tonne of hay, which is worth 2,500 yuan (about 359.25 U.S. dollars), said Cui Lihua, general manager of Shandong Lvfeng Agriculture Group Co., Ltd., which runs the farm in Liupu, Wudi County.
“The 3,000 mu of alfalfa on the farm have been harvested five times, and when combined with the output of another 3,000 mu of oat grass, I’d say we’ve had quite good returns this year,” Cui said.
The primary source of income for farmers in Wudi has been crop cultivation. However, the highly saline soil in the coastal county has compelled them to be selective with the crops they cultivate.
Of the more than 1.2 million mu of farmland in the county, there are 700,000 mu of mild to moderate saline land.
Food crops including corn and wheat, if grown on saline soils, may not produce high yield, but salt-tolerant pasture grasses like alfalfa are a suitable choice, said Zhang Jian, a Communist Party of China official of Liupu Township.
Alfalfa, which is well-known for its high yield and high-quality forage, has been utilized extensively as cattle feed. These pastures can also help improve saline soils, Zhang added….