Farmers’ adoption of water-saving irrigation technology alleviates water scarcity in metropolis suburbs: A case study of Beijing, China

Abstract

Water scarcity has threatened the food security and been a critical concern in China. Promoting modern agricultural irrigation technologies has been identified as an important measure against water scarcity. The overall goal of this study was to analyze the adoption of water-saving irrigation technology by farmers and to identify the major influencing factors of this decision for metropolis suburbs. Based on a field survey of Beijing of China, the results showed that 53.1% of farmers adopted water-saving irrigation technologies to cope with water scarcity, most of which adopted engineering water-saving technologies. The number of adopted water-saving irrigation technologies followed a strong negative correlation with the share of adopters. Econometric analysis revealed that education, farm size, on-farm demonstration, cooperative, training, groundwater, access to information, water use associations, drought-prone area, neighboring farmers, and policy subsidies significantly improved the adaption to water scarcity. Age, production specialization, and cost posed a negative effect on famers’ adoption of water-saving irrigation technologies. These results and implications provide an understanding of farmers’ sustainable irrigation practices and offer an insight to influencing factors to frame improved strategies and policies that enable to cope with water scarcity of metropolis suburbs.