Research On Agricultural Water Use Technical Efficiency And Influencing Factors In Shaanxi Province

China's water conservancy has achieved great development after"11th Five-Year"with investment on water conservancy accounted for 20% of total debt investments. Growing water scarcity of agricultural irrigation still left to be unsolved. With a key issue of efficiency, solving the problem of low efficiency of irrigation water has been considered priority research areas. Shaanxi province is one of the provinces which are suffering severe water scarcity. Most of the irrigation districts are practicing widespread agricultural water use losses, extensive water use, and flood irrigation, with irrigation water use efficiency less than 50%. It is worthwhile to improve water use efficiency so as to solve the shortage of water resources and develop agricultural production. Sharing a large quantity, irrigation water has the most potential for water saving. Therefore, it is of significance to improve the efficiency of irrigation water from the prospective water use efficiency.This thesis comprehensively reviewed the research on efficiency of agricultural technical and irrigation water use technical efficiency, evaluated the water status in Shaanxi Province, selected Data Envelopment Analysis and input-output indicators to measure irrigation water technical efficiency of large-scale irrigation districts and different regions of Shaanxi province, explored the reasons lead to low technical efficiency, analyzed the factors affecting irrigation water technical efficiency and proposed policy recommendations to improve the efficiency of irrigation water use. This thesis can be divided into the following three parts.In the first part, this thesis assessed the current status of Shaanxi agricultural water use. Before analyzing the structure and trends of agricultural water use and pointing out the water problems Shaanxi is facing, a comprehensive evaluation of the natural endowment of water resources in Shaanxi was made. In the second part of the thesis, we calculated the irrigation water use technical efficiency of irrigation districts and regions. Sub-vector model of DEA method was adopted to measure the technical efficiency and scale efficiency of the irrigation districts and regions before the utmost water-saving potential was estimated. In the third part, Tobit regression model was used to estimate the impact of factors like natural climatic factors, level of economic development, condition of water facilities and features of agricultural irrigation water use that influencing irrigation water use technical efficiency of different regions.The four main conclusions are: (1) there is great disparity of space-time precipitation among regions in Shaanxi and most of the regions are facing water scarcity. Despite the total water consumption increased in the latest few years, agricultural water consumption reduced year by year, also with a reduction of proportion of the water consumption. Although the productivity of agricultural water going up, agriculture sector faces more severe water stress. (2) There is large gap of efficiency level among these irrigation districts. To be more specific, high efficiency districts include Jinghuiqu, Shitouhe and Shibaochuan, medium efficiency districts include Yangmaowang, Baojixia, Fengjiashan, Taoqubo and Luohuiqu, Dong-lei, Jiaokou were clarified into low efficiency districts. Under the existing technology level, the ten irrigation districts can save a total volume of 0.2469 billion cube of water when keeping other inputs and agricultural output constant. (3) Shaanxi can have a maximum possible annual savings of total volume of 2.165 billion cube irrigation water, 38% of the overall current water use. Worth mentioning, Guanzhong consists of 70% of the total water-saving potential of the province. Seeing a "inverted U" type trend between the scales of irrigation water with irrigation water scale efficiency, medium-scale irrigation regions have the highest average technical efficiency level, larger than both small scale and large-scale irrigation regions. (4) Reducing the share of water use of agricultural sector, improving the share of water use of industry, increasing low water-consuming crop as well as raising per capita GDP will increase irrigation water efficiency. Stable-harvesting arable lands are wasting irrigation water, which causes low irrigation water technical efficiency.Based on this study, water pricing was proposed as water-saving incentive to induce farmers to save water actively. The government ought to convert"supply management"to "demand management", promote a variety of technical ways to achieve water-saving irrigation, linked agricultural water efficiency indicators to political achievements and implement total catchments management to improve irrigation water use efficiency.