Abstract
The command area of the Rakh branch canal grows wheat, sugarcane, and rice crops in abundance. The canal water, which is trivial for irrigating these crops, is conveyed to the farms through the network of canals and distributaries. For the maintenance of this vast infrastructure; the end users are charged on a seasonal basis. The present water charges are severely criticized for not being adequate to properly manage the entire infrastructure. We use the residual value to determine the value of the irrigation water and then based on the quantity of irrigation water supplied to farm land coupled with the infrastructure maintenance cost, full cost recovery figures are executed for the study area, and policy recommendations are made for the implementation of the full cost recovery system. The approach is unique in the sense that the pricings are based on the actual quantity of water conveyed to the field for irrigating crops. The results of our analysis showed that the canal water is severely under charged in the culturable command area of selected distributaries, thus negating the plan of having a self-sustainable irrigation system.
Highlights
Irrigation in Pakistan is indispensable for agriculture, as is true for most of the World’s arid and semiarid environments
This research uses the residual value of water for agriculture in the selected study area to study the allocation of the resource [16]
It should be noted that increased size of the study area will certainly increase the number of dominating features that might affect the revenue generated by a farmer from agriculture productivity
Summary
Irrigation in Pakistan is indispensable for agriculture, as is true for most of the World’s arid and semiarid environments. The area of irrigated land in Pakistan has grown from about 11.6 million hectares in 1947 to nearly 22.6 million ha in 1997 [1]. Irrigated farming accounts for 75% of total water withdrawals [2]. The preamble of the recent research done in the context of food and water security states that water supplies in Pakistan are threatened by human-induced pressures. The quality of aquatic ecosystems is experiencing severe deterioration due to climate change [3]. This deterioration of the ecosystem can have a serious adverse impact on Pakistan’s economy in general and Punjab’s (a province of Pakistan) in particular. The majority of Punjab’s rural work force (as much as 60%)
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