Measuring Land and Water Productivity in a Mexican Irrigation District

Abstract

Being a water-scarce country, Mexico needs to try to optimize economic returns to irrigated land and irrigation water. This paper discusses a methodology to measure land and water productivity and shows how this methodology was applied to the Alto Rio Lerma irrigation district. Returns to land and water are compared over time as well as across the 11 irrigation modules within the district. The main conclusion of the paper is that although water is the limiting production factor, farmers still try to maximize returns per unit of land cropped, resulting in relatively high returns to consumed water, but very low returns to unit of command and water supplied. It is argued that, prior to trying to increase returns to water supplied, one needs to gain better understanding of the effects of using water 'more efficiently' within the district on land and water productivity of other users within the river basin.