| Facing the grim situation of the agricultural water supply and the fact of inefficient useof water resource, improving irrigation efficiency that can save agricultural water is the key toenhance the national agricultural comprehensive strength, to ensure national food security andto meet the basic requirements of constructing water-saving society. Therefore, this study,based on the existing research, propose three essential questions: What is the current level ofirrigation efficiency in agricultural production? What factors restrict irrigation efficiency to beimproved? Based on the conclusions of the two questions above, what could be done toimprove the irrigation efficiency?Based on systematically combing the literature on the evaluation of agricultural wateruse efficiency at home and abroad, this study employ the productivity frontier approach toevaluate agricultural water use efficiency in Guanzhong region, Shaanxi. The data used in theresearch was collected in Baojixia, Luohuiqu and Stone River irrigation districts fromFebruary to April of2012. Since the content of data is mainly about agriculture productionbetween November2010and October2011,322useful production samples extracted from206households, the study primarily focuses on the micro-level irrigation efficiency of thefarmers. Agricultural water use efficiency can be divided into specific irrigation technicalefficiency and irrigation economic efficiency, which can be estimated by both DEA and SFArespectively. The values of efficiency by the two methods are conducted the difference testand consistency test. Irrigation economic efficiency based on DEA is the irrigation costefficiency and SFA estimate the allocative efficiency of agricultural water. Finally, theresearch does ANOVA between groups divided by exogenous variables that affect irrigationefficiency and use the Tobit regression model to explore more deepgoing analysis.The basic conclutions:(1) In terms of irrigation technical efficiency, the value based onDEA is far less than that of SFA and the irrigation technical efficiency measured by DEA andSFA is0.3753and0.4372, respectively. The result indicates that there is approximately56%-62%of agricultural water that can be reduced on the condition that output and otherinputs are not changed, which also means there is huge potential to save water in agricultural production. Paired t test shows that the values of irrigation technical efficiency measured byDEA and SFA for the same sample are significantly different, but the consistency test suggeststhere is remarkable consistency of samples’ relative ranking.(2) As for the irrigationeconomic efficiency, DEA and SFA estimate two kinds of economic efficiencies withcompletely different meaning: the irrigation cost efficiency and the allocative efficiency ofagricultural water. The irrigation cost efficiency based on DEA is a radical cost efficiency ofsingle element in the conditions of total factors production. Since there is not a price vector ofa variety of factors in the calculation of irrigation cost efficiency, the value of irrigation costefficiency and that of irrigation technical efficiency are equal. The average of irrigation costefficiency is0.3753, still less than that of production cost efficiency, indicating that thepotential savings in the cost of agricultural water sampled is about62.47%. The allocativeefficiency of agricultural water based on SFA is the application of marginal analysis method,which equals the ratio of marginal revenue of agricultural water and marginal cost ofagricultural water. The ideal configuration of allocative efficiency is1, which means the besteconomic efficiency of agricultural water. The study shows the configuration valuedistribution of allocative efficiency of agricultural water is in a great span, and the vastmajority of production samples’ marginal product of agricultural water is greater than itsmarginal cost, mainly due to the low price of water caused by the extensive management ofagricultural water resources.(3) In the multi-dimensional group differences test of irrigationtechnical efficiency, there are a series of packets from groups divided by a single dimension.Specifically, the irrigation group production technology efficiency significantly greater thannon-irrigated group production technology efficiency, that irrigation in production cansignificantly improve production efficiency; Baojixia Irrigation and Luohui DrainageIrrigation District’s irrigation technology efficiency without significant difference, but they aresignificant with greater than the Stones River Irrigation District irrigation technologyefficiency; downstream of the irrigation district irrigation technology efficiency issignificantly greater than upstream of the irrigation district irrigation technology efficiency;no significant difference in canal water and groundwater irrigation technology efficiency, butthey are significantly greater than the mixed water irrigation technology efficiency; extensivethe irrigation technology, irrigation technology efficiency is significantly less than the borderirrigation or furrow and drip irrigation technology efficiency and traditional furrow or borderirrigation of irrigation technology efficiency is not such as to predict significantly less thanthe drip irrigation technology of irrigation technology efficiency; the sand sample irrigationtechnology efficiency is less than clay irrigation efficiency, but this difference was notsignificant. Different crops, corn and kiwi lower the efficiency of irrigation technology, efficient irrigation technology in wheat and apple difference in equivalent to the price of water,irrigation area of a single charge of technical efficiency highest traffic charges and timeefficiency of irrigation technology equivalent area annual fixed charges and minimumelectricity charges for irrigation technical efficiency; different to the water situation due to thedifference of farmers income agricultural water scarcity, farmers interim coalition or villagesquad for the units to water and individual farmers directly to water efficiency of irrigationtechnology was no significant difference, but they are significantly less than the efficiency ofirrigation techniques in the village committee as the representative of the collective water way;reality of the Water Users Association just the traditional simple to buy water intermediaries,does not promote the efficiency of irrigation techniques; relatively low penetration ofgovernment promotion of water-saving demonstration and incentives, and could not reallymake a difference and improve the efficiency of irrigation technology.(4) The influencingfactors analysis of irrigation technical efficiency can be obtained the following conclusions:cultivation characteristics, planting scale very useful to improve the efficiency of irrigationtechnology, and the degree of land fragmentation and irrigation frequency had no significanteffect on the efficiency of irrigation technology; the characteristics of the water market, theprice of water rise can significantly improve the efficiency of irrigation technology, the lowerthe water level of rural development in the market to sell the number of water main and thenumber of items to sell water services had no significant effect on the efficiency of irrigationtechnology; farmers characteristics, family the number of agricultural labor and agriculturallabor force by level of education due to the limitations of the data can produce a significantrole in the efficiency of irrigation techniques, and the average age of the agricultural laborforce have a significant negative impact on the efficiency of irrigation technology, householdincome and the proportion of agricultural income irrigation techniques efficiency have asignificant positive effect, reflect of farmers social relations network variables are notsignificant with the, reflect the variable of farmers to obtain information capacity only farmersreading or watching report shows the efficiency of irrigation technology have significantly thepositive role; natural conditions, the role of temperature and light conditions is not obvious,showed a significant positive correlation between the efficiency of irrigation technology andprecipitation; other dummy variables, regression and analysis of variance results are basicallythe same. |
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