Effects Of Irrigation Water System Innovation In China And Its Implementation

The irrigation water consumption occupies the largest proportion in the country's annual water consumption ,and the low utilization of irrigation water are known by many people in the course of agricultural production. Then how to save water in the process of irrigation becomes the key to solve the problem of water shortage in China.To achieve the target of saving irrigation water, two different ways can be applied. One is to save water by improving the technology of irrigation system ,the other is to improve the water use efficiency by institutional innovation of the irrigation water system. Then the institutional innovation has been put into practice in china since the 90's in last century and there are also two kind of institutional innovation: one is to make the non-government people to be the operators of some irrigation systems and make the water to be real commodity, which will motivate the farmers to reduce their production cost by saving water. The other is to help farmer to establish an organization which is called Water User Association. By the participation of farmers, they can share the irrigation system and make choice on water uses and responsibility of investment to the system. Based on the theoretical analysis of the two kind of institution innovation , this essay choose the Xian'yang district as an example for the local government has imposed the institutional innovation in the district. So I spent some time to rural area to find out how the institutional innovation affect the behavior of the farmers on water usage. By field investigation and issuing questionnaire, it comes to an conclusion as follows: In generally ,the institution innovation, to some extent ,to be effective in the way of making an increase in collection of water fee and improving the irrigation system. But on one hand, the participation in the Water User Association is very low and there still many people don't know the function of the WUAs. On the other hand, the people who got the right to operate the irrigation systems in some area make water price higher than that the farmers can afford, which make the farmers to reduce their irrigation frequency and therefore reduce the production outcome. Finally, some advice are given such as reinforce the government support to construction of irrigation infrastructure, improve the farmers' understanding of institution and policy related to the institutional reform in order to help them to be the main subject of reform and so forth.