Allocation, Soil Quality and the Demand for Irrigation Technology

Economists have long argued that increasing the price of agricultural water will encourage the adoption of efficient irrigation technologies. This article considers the choice of irrigation systems conditional on prior land allocation decisions. Adoption functions for gravity and low-pressure irrigation technologies are estimated for citrus and vineyard crops using a field-level data set from California's Central Valley. Re-sults show that the influence of land quality and water price on low-pressure tech-nology adoption is greater for citrus than for vineyard crops. Consequently, the re-sponse of growers to changes in policy will be conditional on land allocation. Key words: irrigation technology adoption, land quality, water polic