Land Quality, Irrigation Development, and Cropping Patterns in the

This article examines the interactions between land quality, crop choice, and technological change using a framework that integrates cross-sectional and intertemporal aspects of diffusion. The empirical results indicate that (a) the acreages allocated to different crops vary significantly over land quality, (h) crops tend to be grown on specific ranges of land quality, (c) the introduction of center pivot technology induced significant changes in cropping patterns, (d) land quality-augmenting technologies tend to be utilized primarily on lower qualities of land, and (e) irrigation development has been quite sensitive to tax policies. Key words: center pivot, cropping patterns, irrigation systems, land quality, land use, technological change. This article develops a framework for incor-porating land quality into empirical studies of cropping patterns and technology choice. The framework is applied in a study of the changes in cropping patterns associated with th